


A New World

by Evilpixie



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, DCU, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 28,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie
Summary: Clark returns from the dead to find his world irreversibly changed.





	1. The End

It was sunny when the world ended.

 

Clark stood in the field outside his childhood home and ran his fingers across the cornstalks, a little too short for this time of the year but growing strong. They swayed softly in the breeze, the gentle electric thrum of their life radiating up into his touch.

 

Life. He was alive. Batman, the man who had held a kryptonite spear to his throat, had brought him back.

 

It didn’t make sense. But, in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was alive, each breath was warm and airy in his lungs, each touch sparking with a thousand sensations, each way he looked another beautiful thing he hadn’t taken notice of before.

 

He heard Lois approach.

 

She was being careful. He didn’t blame her. When he’d first opened his eyes in the birthing pit he’d known nothing. Nothing but the shock and the pain of a body starved of sun but being pumped full of a different more alien kind of energy. But then he’d flown and seen the ruined remains of the Superman monument he’d known something… but it hadn’t made sense.

 

There had been strangers there. A man in a red suit, a man with a metal body, a man with strange eyes, and a woman… a woman that had seemed familiar. But he didn’t know them and they didn’t seem right or good. He’d fought them until Batman had arrived.

 

He knew Batman.

 

He knew what he’d done to him. What he’d tried to do.

 

Clark would have killed him if it wasn’t for Lois emerging from the car when she did.

 

She had saved him. But, in doing so, she had seen it. The confusion, the madness, the _violence_. Whatever it was the pit had brought out in him. Whatever it was he was still trying to crush down inside. She had seen it and now her steps were hesitant and unsure.

 

He looked over his shoulder at her and forced himself to smile. “It’s okay, Lo. It’s me.”

 

Lois stared at him for a long moment. Then her face crumbled and she strode towards him.

 

The embrace was tight and warm. He inhaled the scent of her hair, felt the comforting weight of her body.

 

“Clark,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

 

“Me neither.”

 

A small shared laugh.

 

And for a moment it felt like it had before he had died. Easy, happy, and good.

 

But then, as he tipped his head forward to kiss her she turned her face aside. “Clark I…” there were tears sliding down her cheeks. “Clark I’m sorry. I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t a strong reporter. I wasn’t a strong person. I… I didn’t wait.”

 

“Lo,” he touched her cheek, felt the hot spark of life inside her. Felt it connect with him. “It’s okay.”

 

“No, Clark, it isn’t.” She reached up to wipe the tears on her face away.

 

That was when he saw it.

 

The engagement ring. The one he had left in an envelope with his mother, the one he’d planned on giving to her after a perfect night in… on the wrong hand.

 

It felt like the time Pete, Lana, and him had jumped off the grain silo at Old Farmer Rod’s. All the older kids had bragged about doing it and all the younger ones dared each other to try. It was the cool thing to do. Jump, fall into the hay pile, don’t get caught by Rod.

 

Except something different happened when they tried.

 

They’d all held hands, counted to three, and then leapt. For a moment it had felt like flying… he could fly, he _was_ flying, and carrying an astonished Pete and Lana with him… but then he remembered people couldn’t fly and he’d fallen. A sickening drop.

 

That was what he was feeling now.

 

Falling. He was falling.

 

“You were gone,” Lois whispered. “For months. Almost a year. I thought…”

 

“You’ve found someone else,” he said. Voice, somehow, normal despite the pitching inside him.

 

Softly. “I’m sorry, Clark.”

 

And that was it.

 

The end of his world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is. My Justice League (2017) fic.
> 
> I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I did not dive into this fandom with the release of the DCEU films. On the contrary, my love for Superbat came from the DCAU and from the comics of the 2000s. In short, I am out of my comfort zone. This is not the Clark or the Bruce I am used to writing. However I wanted to give something back to the Superbat fandom and the DCEU seems to be where that is at right now.
> 
> I really hope I can write these characters well, that DCEU fans enjoy it, and that you can forgive me if small little comic-isms or DCAU-ism sneak in here and there.


	2. Liar

Clark learnt something about himself over the next few days.

 

He learnt he was a liar.

 

Despite the storm in his chest, despite the pain of losing Lois, despite the sickening disorientation of a world without a future to look forward to, he smiled. He smiled as he rescued civilians from swarms of parademons, he smiled as he fought alongside Bruce Wayne’s strange little team to stop Steppenwolf, and he smiled as the press leapt over themselves to take the first photos of a resurrected Superman.

 

He must be good at lying because, even as photos of him went around the world, no one said his smile looked fake, or questioned his glossy recount of his return from the dead. The only person that looked at him sideways when he told a woman with a reporter’s badge that he had never felt better was Bruce.

 

But Bruce always looked at him sideways.

 

The man didn’t trust him. He’d made that perfectly obvious when he’d stood on Clark’s sternum and held a kryptonite spear to his face.

 

Clark didn’t trust Bruce either.

 

So he ignored Bruce’s looks, kept smiling, and tried to pretend he wasn’t acutely aware of Lois lying in a stranger’s bed on the other side of the planet.

 

Her hair was damp as it fell across the pillow. Clark always told her she shouldn’t go to sleep with wet hair. He wasn’t sure why but he was sure that it was a rule. She never listened to him. In truth, he hadn’t minded. He liked the smell of strawberry shampoo, the cool weight of her wet hair, and even the way it would change from dark brown to auburn as it dried.

 

He wondered if her new boyfriend could appreciate that. He wondered if he could even see all the colours in Lois’ hair.

 

“One more question, Superman,” the reporter in front of him was still smiling, unaware his attention was elsewhere.

 

He smiled back. “Yes?”

 

“Do you think you will be working with these heroes again?”

 

Heroes. How the world had changed. When he was killed he was the only super powered being on the planet and the world hated him for it. Now there were others, and they were heroes.

 

He turned to look at them.

 

The first person he saw was Diana. A woman with the weapons and abilities of a god, with the foresight and knowledge to call him Kal-El when he’d flown from the birthing pit, and who, despite all that, Clark still knew very little about. Beside her was Aquaman a man who Clark thought looked as unstable as the seas he claimed were his home. Then there was Cyborg, half ever-evolving alien technology, half seventeen year old kid in out of his depth. Finally, standing awkwardly and unassuming at the end of the line, was Flash. A man who Clark was sure, if he really wanted to, could move faster than Clark. A lot faster.

 

He would have a hard time trusting any of them even if they hadn’t allied themselves with Bruce. AKA, the Batman. AKA, the man Clark had been planning on writing an incriminating article on before he’d tried to kill him.

 

“Of course,” he lied. Another lie. “I would be happy to work with any of these heroes again. They have all proved that they are more than capable and, if my downfall at the hands of Luthor’s creature has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t protect the world on my own. Working together, we saved the planet, and I believe if we stayed together as a team, we could be a force that could truly work for the ideals of peace and justice.”

 

The woman lifted an eyebrow. “Like a bunch of… _super_ friends?”

 

He kept his smile locked in place, hiding what he really thought of that idea. “More like a… Justice League.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me at the end of the first chapter: "This is a DCEU story, not a DCAU story."
> 
> Me at the end of the second chapter: "Let's end this chapter with an infamous DCAU quote."


	3. Home Sweet Home

So, as it turned out, that was the absolute worst thing he could have said.

 

Now not only did the world think Bruce’s motley crew of super powered strangers was a team… they thought it was _his_ team. Pictures of ‘Superman’s Justice League’ began appearing across all major news outlets, murals of them with him at the centre became the focus of street artists from Moscow to Metropolis, and when he visited the survivors of Steppenwolf’s attack a little girl tugged on his cape and asked him what she needed to do to join.

 

The worst part was there was no escape from it.

 

He couldn’t put on a pair of glasses and go to work at the Daily Planet. He couldn’t dress in baggy sweats and pretend to struggle on the weight machine at the gym. He couldn’t even buy takeout to share with Lois.

 

Clark Kent was dead, Lois was gone, and Superman… well… as Superman he didn’t know what he could say or do to disassociate himself from the team that wouldn’t also put him at odds with them. And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want another media frenzy, he didn’t even want all the endless love the world had decided to pour on him since his death.

 

He just wanted to be left alone.

 

“I just… I don’t know what to do, Ma. I’ve just come back and everything is… _so_ out of my control. First Lois and now the Justice League? It wasn’t perfect but at least, before I died, I had some…”

 

“No,” his mother held up her hand. “Please, Clark. Don’t talk about dying, or being dead. I don’t want to think about that.”

 

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

 

“And don’t apologise. It’s okay. You’re back now. That’s all that matters.” A pause. “Do you want some of my fish?” She asked softly.

 

“No thank you.”

 

“Are you sure?” She pushed. “You’ve barely touched your burger. Are you feeling okay? You look thin.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

They were in small booth at the very back of Mama Jo’s, the smallest eat in bar in all of Smallville. He was surprised when his mother had said to meet him here but hadn’t protested. It was quiet, the owners were friendly, and the food was greasy in a good kind of way.

 

Not that he was in the mood to eat any of it.

 

“It’s Lois,” he muttered. “I didn’t think I would ever have to live without her. I thought we would get married, have children, and that would be it. We would be happy, just like you and Pa. When I decided to fight Luthor’s creature I knew I would lose that but … I just thought… she was my world, Ma. My whole world.”

 

She didn’t say anything.

 

“And now everyone loves Superman, and ‘the Justice League’, and I… I love her. Just her. I… this wasn’t…”

 

“Are you sure you don’t want any fis—?”

 

“I don’t want your fish!”

 

The room dipped into silence and a few faces turned towards him. Clark realised he’d crushed the fork in his hand.

 

“I… I’m sorry,” he whispered and dropped the fork on the table, mangled like a twisted piece of wire. “I… I didn’t mean to shout.” He’d never yelled at his mother before. Never. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

 

“Clark.” She reached across the table to lay a hand over his. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll get through this. I know you will.”

 

“Yeah,” he rasped, not really agreeing but not knowing what else to say. “Yeah.”

 

They finished their meal in silence. His mother, as always, only ate half of what she was served. He barely managed a quarter. When it was clear they had done the best they could an older woman with braided white hair came over to collect their plates.

 

Martha smiled. “Thanks Cathy. How much do I owe you?”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Martha. Make it up to me some other time.” She turned to him. “Good to see you too, Clark. You should drop in more often.”

 

“I…” he began, and then stopped as he recognised her. “Ms Wittenberg?”

 

She laughed. “You remember?”

 

“Yes. Your brownies were always the best at the Methodist Church’s bake sale.”

 

“You sure did have a sweet tooth back then, didn’t you?”

 

“I…” He trailed off. She’d recognised him, called him Clark. But Clark was officially dead. Surely she knew that. It had been in the Smallville Lion’s newsletter, the pamphlet that everyone received in their mailbox every second weekend and read religiously. But, somehow, she didn’t look the least bit surprised to see him alive and having dinner with his mother. And, now that he looked around, neither did any of the other patrons of the bar. A few saw his look and raised their beers at him.

 

With a lurch he realised they knew.

 

They knew he was alive… because they knew he was Superman.

 

He shouldn’t be surprised. These were the people that watched him grow up, that gossiped about the school bus crash, that would have recognised him when General Zod attacked. But they hadn’t said anything. Not then and not now upon his resurrection. He could see it in the eyes of the men and women looking at him.

 

They wouldn’t tell.

 

“Thanks for lunch Ms Wittenberg,” he muttered. “I… Thank you.”

 

“No, thank you, Clark.”

 

He swallowed down the wrongness that sentence left him and stood to leave. When he started towards the front door his mother reached out, took his hand, and instead led him through the kitchen and out the back door.

 

At first he was confused.

 

But then he saw it.

 

Parked in edge of the overgrown lot was his father’s pickup truck, the tray covered with odd pieces of furniture, haphazardly tied down and stuffed under a tarp. Behind it sat the old camper trailer, the top and sides extended, and the inside lit with the harsh blue glow of a mosquito lamp.

 

Abigail’s chain was clipped onto the bullbars. She crawled out from under the car and wagged her tail as they approached.

 

Clark stopped, his gut churning, as he realised what he was looking at.

 

“Ma?”

 

“Yeah?” She knelt to scratch the dog behind her ears.

 

“Are you homeless?”

 

“No Clark,” she waved a dismissive hand. “Just… in between places right now. The bank foreclosure was a lot faster than I thought it would be. I didn’t have time to organise a place. I was going to go to Metropolis. They have emergency housing there. But when you came back, Lois told me you flew her here, I drove back and… well… when I saw Smallville again I realised I couldn’t leave. This is where you grew up. Where I met Jon. This is my home.” She smiled. “Cathy’s letting me park here for now. Just until I find a place to rent. Lovely lady, that Cathy. I take back everything I ever said about her bake sale brownies.”

 

Clark felt numb.

 

His mother was homeless.

 

He was worrying about the media, about his affiliation with the Justice League, about Lois and his mother had been living for what looked like weeks in a caravan from the eighties.

 

“Ma… why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“It’s not as bad as all that,” she said. “I have a roof, I have Abigail here.”

 

“What about the money Pa got from Grandma? Isn’t that…?”

 

Softly. “It’s been gone for years Clark.”

 

“But… Didn’t you inherit the money I earnt at the Daily Planet? It wasn’t much but...”

 

“I used that money to seed some new crops. I thought I would have time to get the harvest in, pay off the mortgage for another year. But, well, it didn’t quite work out that way.”

 

A moment of silence.

 

“Lois’ ring,” he whispered, heart hurting just to mention it. “Did you ask for the ring back? It didn’t cost that much but it could help.”

 

“I gave it to her, Clark. I’m not going to take it back. She already tried to.”

 

“Yes but…” And then it hit him. He had no identity. No way to get a job, a loan, or even a bank account. He had no way to help her. “Oh God.”

 

“Clark,” she straightened and walked towards him. “It’s okay. Sometimes things like this happen. But it’s all for the best. The Lord wouldn’t give us challenges we couldn’t overcome.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “There was nothing harder than losing you. And now that I have you back I know I can survive this. I know.”

 

“I’ll find a way to fix this,” he promised.

 

She smiled. The same smile she used to give him when he was five years old and wanted to be a dinosaur when he grew up. “Would you like to stay here tonight?” She asked. “I don’t know where you’ve been sleeping – or _if_ you’ve been sleeping – but you look exhausted. You can take the big bed though, I warn you, you’ll probably be sharing with Abigail.”

 

He choked out a laugh. “Sure, Ma. Sure.”


	4. No Other Option

In the end, there was no other option.

 

After a night sleeping in his mother’s too small caravan, a morning watching her struggle to boil an egg on a faulty gas cooker, and a day spent desperately trying to think of another way to help her, he gave in and flew to Gotham.

 

It didn’t take long to find who he was looking for.

 

“It’s the motherfucking bat!”

 

“Get him!”

 

“Where did he go? Where the fuck did he—AAAHHHgghh!”

 

“The fuck?! Benny! He’s got Benny!”

 

“Who cares about Benny?! Fire!”

 

“My gun ain’t working. Why the fuck ain’t my gun— _shit_!”

 

Clark hovered overhead and watched the thugs cluster together in a terrified huddle in the warehouse, guns pointed at every shadow.

 

They didn’t stand a chance.

 

Bruce dropped from one of the ceiling rafters, cape snapping behind him in a way Clark’s never did, and attacked.

 

It was… strangely beautiful. Bruce moved like a predator, every strike precise and powerful, every motion fluid but strong, every kick, punch or grapple full of deadly intent. But, undercutting it all, like water under ice, was anger. He could see it in the set of the man’s jaw, in the tightness of his fist, and the stiffness of his shoulders. Bruce was angry. But it was a feeling he was used to. A feeling he was using. A feeling that was feeding the battle as much as the criminals he fought.

 

Clark hated that. It was at the epicentre of why he’d wanted to write the article condemning Batman in the first place.

 

Because that wasn’t justice, it was vengeance. And that wasn’t right.

 

But then one of the men that Bruce had thrown down grabbed a gun, pointed it at the back of Bruce’s head, and fired.

 

Before he could think about what he was doing Clark had plunged through the flimsy metal ceiling and was there, in the middle of the fight, the bullet warm and pliable in his fist.

 

For a moment no one moved, everyone frozen in the middle of whatever action they were performing, the man with the gun blinking owlishly at Clark with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

 

“Run,” Clark said.

 

The man shook.

 

He let his eyes shine red. “Now.”

 

With a small whimper he dropped the weapon and sprinted out of the warehouse. The others quickly followed.

 

When they were gone Clark turned to Bruce. The man hadn’t moved but was watching him, eyes dark and unreadable behind the cowl.

 

“Superman.”

 

“Batman,” Clark responded and dropped the bullet. It gave a dull chime as it hit the concrete floor.

 

Bruce’s gaze flicked down to that bullet then back up at him. There was a tightness to his lips that hadn’t been there before. “My armour can withstand normal calibre at point blank range.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Clark said.

 

Bruce finally straightened to his full and frustratingly impressive height. For a second Clark remembered being in another Gotham warehouse facing this man, Kryptonite burning his lungs, and something between a smile and a snarl on the other man’s face.

 

“Is there something you need, Superman?”

 

“I need help,” Clark said, hating the words even as he said them.

 

Bruce tilted his head, interested. “I can contact the others if—”

 

“No. I don’t need the others. It’s not something they can help with.”

 

Undeterred. “If it’s a threat that you need help with I think they—”

 

“It’s not a _threat_ ,” he said through his teeth.

 

Bruce didn’t say anything. Waited.

 

“It’s…” Clark sucked in a deep breath. “…my mother,” he finally confessed.

 

If he didn’t have Bruce’s full attention before, he had it now.

 

“While I was dead the bank took the farm,” Clark explained. “I didn’t realise until last night what that meant. She has no money and no place to stay.” He paused for a moment as those words settled around him, a failure so profound he didn’t know if he could even call himself a good person anymore. “I need a loan, just enough so I can get her set up somewhere.” Low. “I will pay you back.” Eventually. Once he figured out how the hell he was going to make money without a social security number. But that was a detail he didn’t need to bring up just then. Not when his mother was on the line.

 

If Bruce was concerned he didn’t show it. “What bank?

 

Clark frowned. “That’s not important.”

 

Bruce studied him for a moment. Then, in a flurry of black fabric, he turned and started walking away.

 

Clark stared after him, stunned. “Batman?”

 

“I’ll take care of it,” the man called over his shoulder.

 

“You’ll… wait. What does that mean? Are you going to give me a loan?”

 

Bruce was already out the door when he answered. “No.”


	5. Things Change

Four days later his mother moved back into the homestead on the Kent Farm. She would have been home sooner but when Bruce inspected the property he found damp and used that as an excuse to renovate the whole house. He also bought new furniture to replace what had been sold in the lead up to the eviction, a new tractor, and even a month’s worth of food for Abigail.

 

Dried chicken liver flavour. Her favourite.

 

Clark felt sick.

 

It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful. He was. But he didn’t want to be in debt to Bruce. Not like this. At least with a loan he would have been able to quantify what he owed, calculate it, and uphold the feeble belief that he would somehow, someday, be able to pay it back.

 

Now?

 

How was he ever going to pay this back?

 

“How did you convince the bank to forgive the mortgage?” Clark asked instead, voice weak as he watched the workers unload the moving van.

 

Bruce’s look was as cool and unreadable as always. “I bought the bank.”

 

What could he say to that? “Thank you,” Clark rasped, his throat tight and uncooperative. “I didn’t expect… thank you.”

 

“I have been looking for more financial assets,” Bruce said simply, looking more comfortable than he had the right to, hair slicked back and sleeves rolled up on his too-expensive-for-Kansas suit. “It was a good business move.”

 

That was a lie.

 

How could buying a failing Midwestern bank and forgiving mortgages be a good business move? Did Bruce really think Clark so ignorant that he would hear the word ‘business’ and accept such a flimsy excuse? He’d worked as a reporter in one of the most respected papers in the country, without a journalism degree. He wasn’t stupid.

 

No. There was no money in this for Bruce. This was about something else.

 

Perhaps, after fighting Luthor’s creature, Bruce had realised it would be better to have Superman as an ally, rather than an enemy. But, if that had been the plan it had backfired spectacularly when, upon being resurrected, Clark had held Bruce up by his neck and parroted the same sickening words the man had said to him upon their first in costume meeting.

_Do you bleed?_

 

Perhaps that was what this was.

 

Perhaps this was a ploy to reel back the damage to their relationship and make Clark like him. To make him trust him, listen to him, and be loyal to him.

 

Perhaps all he really wanted was Superman, inclined towards and in debt to Batman.

 

_A good business move._

 

“Clark!” His mother burst through the door and practically scampered down the steps to engulf him in a tight hug. “Have you seen the new kitchen? It’s so much bigger now. I mean, I know it’s not really bigger, but it _looks_ so much bigger.” She noticed the man standing beside him for the first time and quickly stepped back. “Oh, Mr Wayne. I didn’t see you there. I would offer you some coffee but…”

 

“Bruce is fine, Martha,” he said and pulled an envelope out of his suit pocket. “And I’m not staying long. I came to give you this.”

 

She took it uncertainly. “What is it?”

 

“The deed, in your name.”

 

“Oh.”

 

For a moment no one spoke.

 

Then his mother launched herself at Bruce to wrap him in a hug, just as tight as the one she’d given Clark.

 

For perhaps the first time, Clark saw Bruce totally caught off guard.

 

“Thank you,” his mother said. “You’ve done so much for me. First you saved me from Luthor’s men, then you brought my son back, and now… I can’t thank you enough, Bruce. I really truly can’t. You’re an angel.”

 

Bruce’s gaze flicked to Clark.

 

There was a question in that look.

 

Clark hadn’t told his mother the whole story. He hadn’t told her about Bruce’s involvement with his death, or the confrontation they had. He hadn’t told her about his never published article or his investigation into the unethical methods and practises of the Batman. He hadn’t told her the origin of the kryptonite spear or even the risks Bruce no doubt took when he resurrected him using a piece of hostile alien technology.

 

Bruce wanted to know _why_.

 

Clark didn’t know the answer.

 

“It’s okay,” Bruce said, awkwardly and uncertainly untangling himself from her embrace. “I owe this to Clark. He thought up the name for the team.”

 

“The Justice League?” His mother looked at him, eyebrow raised. “ _You_ thought of that?”

 

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” he muttered. “A mistake.”

 

“Still,” Bruce continued, unfazed. “It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

 

Clark didn’t say what he knew both he and his mother were thinking, which was that the name was corny as hell. But, on the other hand, there was apparently now a group called the Suicide Squad and maybe even another emerging that had dubbed themselves the Legion of Doom. In comparison, the Justice League was music to his ears.

 

“Speaking of the League,” Bruce said.

 

And Christ, it felt like it was fifteen minutes since he’d bungled that interview and already it was ‘the League’?

 

“…I would like to get the team together again,” Bruce continued, “to talk about the possibility of future attacks. I know you weren’t with us for the majority of our campaign against Steppenwolf but I would appreciate it if you would come. It occurred to me you don’t really know the team very well.”

 

Both his mother and Bruce were looking at him, waiting for his response.

 

Clark turned aside. “I’ll think about it.”

 

“He’ll come,” Clark heard his mother whisper to Bruce.

 

It amazed him that, after all these years, she still thought he wouldn’t hear her when she whispered. Or, maybe she knew he heard, but didn’t care.

 

“I’ll think about it,” he said again.

 

Despite what the world may think the Justice League was Bruce's team, not his, and no matter how many banks the man bought or mortgages he forgave, Clark still wasn’t ready to trust him. Especially if inviting him to this meeting was another  _good business move._

 

He caught sight of the workers unloading the old orange sofa.

 

“Hey, Ma. Do you want me to move that upstairs?”

 

“Hm? Oh no. We’ll try it downstairs for now.”

 

“But… that’s the upstairs sofa. It’s always been there.”

 

“Just because it’s always been there doesn’t mean that’s where it always has to be,” she reminded him sternly. “Things change, Clark.”

 

He swallowed the bitter feeling those words left inside him.

 

He was sick of change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My internet is worse than a bee up the bum right now. My responses and chapter post times may vary wildly.


	6. Just Superman

In the days that followed Clark did something he had never done before. He became Superman. Not Clark Kent. Not an investigative reporter. Not even a son anxiously trying to help his mother. Just Superman. Twenty four seven.

 

He caught crashing planes, put out fires, and carried food shipments to locations no one else could get to. He talked people off ledges, stood in the middle of gunfights, and helped hundreds of refugees move from one place to the next, only to see them a few days later when they were told, once again, that they needed to leave. He purified gallons of water with his heat vision, replanted whole crops after they had been destroyed in storms, and even pulled a cat from a tree.

 

It was exhausting.

 

And what made it worse was the fact that he didn’t have anywhere to go where he could get away from it all.

 

In the past his escape had been Lois.

 

Her smile, her dry humour, her breaths against his neck as they made love in the bed, bath, or up against a wall. All things that could make the noise and stress of the world fade away.

 

God, he missed her.

 

Now all he had was the small snatches of sleep he caught whenever and wherever he could. On the roof of an abandoned building, in a field, on a rocky strip of desert…

 

He even tried to sleep on the moon a couple of times but the lack of atmosphere meant there was nothing to breathe. In the past that wouldn’t have stopped him. He had long ago learnt he was capable of surviving without inhaling oxygen and in the past had slept underwater or in deep snow drifts when he wanted to be left alone. But now… the stillness, the quiet… he couldn’t do it. Not anymore.

 

But that was okay. He didn’t need to sleep. Not really. And, if he really got desperate, he knew his mother would always have a room set up for him in the newly renovated farmhouse. Really, he should be sleeping there. But, as much as he appreciated what Bruce had done and loved his mother, he needed his own space. Without an apartment or money to rent one that space became wherever he could find it.

 

When he finally did return to the farm late one night it was in search of food, another comfort he didn’t actually need but helped in the ‘staying sane’ department. He found some left over chicken curry in the fridge with a note, written in his mother’s handwriting, stuck onto the Tupperware lid.

 

 _Bruce called with the details on the Justice League meetup. I told him you would go._ Those words were followed by a time, address, and, in parentheses, _you should really get your own phone again, Clark. I love you but I’m not your secretary. Enjoy the chicken. Love, Mom._

 

He stared at that piece of paper for a long time, trying to sort out the mess of emotions waging war in his gut.

 

He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to be at Bruce’s beckon call, or to affiliate himself further with a team of people he knew so little about. He didn’t want to become Batman’s puppet just because the man had helped his mother. But, Bruce _had_ helped his mother, and these people _had_ brought him back from the dead.

 

And, even if he didn’t want to be a member of the League, it would be a good idea to think up a plan of action in case another intergalactic threat landed on their doorstep. After all, they got lucky with Steppenwolf. The would-be conqueror hadn’t planned on the League being able to resurrect Clark and didn’t have any defence against a Kryptonian defender. Another threat might not be so poorly prepared.

 

But, on the other hand, what did any of them really know about defending a planet and what plans could they make against an unknown – and possibly non-existent – threat? Was this meeting even about discussing strategy, or was it somehow a part of Bruce’s plan?

 

He looked at the date and time, and then up at the calendrer on the wall. His mother always crossed off the days as they happened which had always seemed silly to him until this moment. The meeting was tomorrow night. Late. Of course it was late. This was Batman he was dealing with.

 

He picked up the chicken, fished a fork out of the kitchen draw, and sat down at the new dining table without bothering to heat it up. About halfway through the meal Abigail padded into the room and lay down across his feet, pinning him to the ground.

 

He wouldn’t go, he decided. He would find an emergency, or perhaps just another cat in a tree. No matter what, he wasn’t going to let Bruce pull his strings this way. He wasn’t going to the meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really debated cutting this chapter because it is a little 'filler' but I think it really leads into the next part of the story and highlights where Clark is at right now. I hope you like it. The next chapter should be out soon.


	7. Looking

He was going to the meeting.

 

He wished he wasn’t. He wished he was strong enough to hold to his convictions and let it slip by while he saved some people from a burning building or answered questions from a five year old with a smartphone. But, at the end of the day, the man _had_ helped his mother and, as much as he hated to admit it, he was curious. He wanted to know what Bruce would say, what the power dynamics in the team were, and how they would react to this presence among them.

 

Still, he waited until he was well and truly late before flying to the address.

 

He’d expected something ominous. A cave, a factory, a mansion on a hill. What he got was a modern glass walled apartment set on the bank of a lake a few miles out of Gotham. There wasn’t an obvious driveway or entry point so he landed on the balcony and, after a moment’s hesitation, entered though one of the sliding doors.

 

Inside, the building was sleek and Spartan, staged to look like living quarters but void of any personal touches that would make it a home. No photos on the wall, no musical instruments tucked away in the corner, no half-finished books left on the coffee table. That starkness paired with the modern style made him feel awkward an out of place. An intruder at best. A brightly coloured country bumpkin at worst.

 

He pushed that feeling down and followed the natural flow of the architecture as it carried him through the surprisingly large apartment until he reached a large frosted glass door. There was light shining through form the other side. He pushed it open.

 

“After all these years,” Bruce said without looking up. “You would think I would be used to failure.”

 

The man sat alone at the table, a bottle and half empty glass of wine sitting in front of him.

 

Clark frowned. “Where is everyone?”

 

Bruce’s sat up, surprised. “Clark? I… I thought you were Alfred.”

 

He advanced into the room uncertainly. “I’m here for the Justice League meeting.”

 

“Ah. Well.” Bruce picked up his wine glass. “You’re the first to arrive.”

 

“I’m two hours late.”

 

“Yes.”

 

The meaning of those words settled on him. “Oh.”

 

Bruce motioned to one of the empty chairs. “You might as well take a seat.”

 

“What happened to the others?” Clark asked.

 

“My guess?” Bruce crossed his arms. “Diana is still angry at me for telling her to get over her dead boyfriend.”

 

“Wow. That’s shitty, even for you.”

 

“She said much the same to me. He died in 1917.”

 

“That’s… wait. How old is she?”

 

“Victor is here,” Bruce continued. “My radar saw him fly in. But he obviously prefers spending time with my data processor than me. He calls it ‘the batcomputer.’”

 

“Wow. Are we sure this kid is a kid and not an old man from the fifties?”

 

“Barry came early to help set up,” Bruce went on, “ate all the food, and left to go buy more. That was three hours ago.”

 

“He might come back. He’s probably just running late.”

 

“He’s the fastest man alive.”

 

“Still…”

 

“And Arthur, well, Arthur’s a lot like you.”

 

“This is the guy with the trident we’re talking about now, right?”

 

“Unpredictable,” Bruce finished. “I really did think he, at least, would come.”

 

Clark took his seat slowly. “Did you think I would come?”

 

“Honestly?” Bruce looked at him, eyes somehow dark even without a mask or a cowl to shadow them. “I had no idea.”

 

With a lurch Clark realised he’d been comforting him. Dammit but he didn’t come here to comfort Bruce.

 

He looked away.

 

“So… I’m guessing no meeting tonight?”

 

“No meeting tonight,” the man confirmed.

 

Clark considered walking out. Instead he picked up the bottle in front of Bruce and used it to fill the empty not-a-wine-glass in front of him.

 

Bruce’s eyebrow lifted. “I did not know alcohol affected you.”

 

“It doesn’t,” Clark answered and took a hearty mouthful of the wine. “But sometimes I like to pretend.”

 

A laugh. Low and surprisingly earnest. “If you want to pretend, drink slower, pucker your lips a little, pretend you hate the taste, but not as much as you love it.”

 

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

 

“I am an expert on pretending to get drunk,” Bruce promised. “And, as it happens, I am also an expert on getting drunk.” He took a swig of his wine. Clark didn’t need to guess to know which one of those two he was partaking in tonight.

 

They sat in silence for a time, sharing the space and Bruce’s probably-stupidly-expensive wine. Clark quietly enjoyed the gap in conversation – it was a rare to spend time with someone who didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with chatter – and took the opportunity to study the other man.

 

Bruce looked… tired. There were deep furrows under his eyes, a fresh coat of silver black stubble on his jaw, and a defeated sag in his shoulders. Clark could relate. Despite that he was dressed to impress, slicked back hair, silk shirt, and tailored black pants. Clark, in contrast, had worn his Superman suit because… well, frankly, he had nothing else he could wear to a Justice League meeting. Most of his clothes had been sold when he died and those that did remain were from his early twenties when he was still living on the farm. He didn’t think Bruce would approve of him showing up in steel capped boots, ripped blue jeans, and a plaid shirt.

 

But, then again, it occurred to him he had very little idea about what Bruce would and what he wouldn’t approve of.

 

“Perhaps it’s good that it’s just you,” Bruce said after a while. “There is something I want to tell you. Something I would rather not say in front of the others.”

 

Clark drank more of the wine and waited.

 

He didn’t know what he expected Bruce to tell him… but it wasn’t what he said.

 

“There is another Kryptonian Mothership on Earth.”

 

“A…” he blinked. “A mothership?”

 

“A ship with a birthing chamber in it.”

 

“You mean the pool? Like the one you used to…?”

 

“Bring you back from the dead. Yes.”

 

Clark didn’t know much about Kryptonian’s era of space exploration or the technology they used, but he did know there was only one other Kryptonian ship equipped with a birthing chamber on the planet… and it was sitting in the middle of Metropolis where it had crashed during his battle with General Zod. Luthor had used it to create a monster and the Justice League had used it to raise him from the dead.

 

“Where?” He asked.

 

“Tibet,” Bruce told him. “It’s the foundation stone for a city called Nanda Parbat.”

 

“Never heard of it.”

 

“It’s small, isolated, and seen as insignificant by most of the world,” Bruce said. “Most maps won’t mark it. However, the locals believe it’s a holy city. They say, in ancient times, a spirit that lived there sometimes spoke to those who were worthy of routes through the stars.”

 

A spirt? Or an AI creating an illusion of a physical body, like the digital recreation of his birth father that uploaded itself into the other ship?

 

“How do you know of this place?” Clark muttered.

 

“I trained there, when I was young.”

 

“Trained?”

 

“There are several factions of monks that live there,” Bruce explained, eyes on his wine, “many of which are masters in martial arts and… other skills. One particular group caught my attention. They have held the ‘underground citadel’ – which I now believe is the inside of the mostly buried Kryptonian spacecraft – for thousands of years. They claim their leader is immortal and that he has become so by bathing in a magical pool they call a ‘Lazarus pit’.”

 

“A birthing pool,” Clark realised.

 

“Yes. I have done some experiments on the chemicals in the pool, how they behave when energised, and what they would do to human cells after repeated exposure. I have come to the conclusion that the monks’ claim that their leader may be immortal might not be as impossible as it sounds.”

 

“That’s… oh my God.”

 

“What’s more,” Bruce went on. “Their records of how their ‘Lazarus pit’ works conform closely to what we have witnessed with the birthing pool. They say it can create monsters if improperly used, that it can raise the dead only when intense amounts of energy is applied, and that, upon emerging from the pit, there is brief period of madness.”

 

“Madness?”

 

“Yes. Like you suffered after your resurrection.”

 

“I… no… that was…” confusion, anger, violence. “…I didn’t know what I was doing.”

 

Bruce didn’t comment on that.

 

“Why are you telling me this?”

 

Bruce tipped his head to the side. “I thought you would want to know. Lois told me you were interested when the first ship was discovered in the Artic. She said that was how you met.”

 

Lois. Bruce had been talking to Lois?

 

Clark crushed down the small pathetic part of himself that leapt at the name and quietly reminded himself that Bruce had called Lois when he was resurrected. Bruce knew Lois. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they spoke.

 

“Are you?” Bruce asked after it became obvious he had abandoned the conversational ball on his side of the court. “Interested? You could use that ship to find out more about your home planet.”

 

When he was young all he’d wanted was to know who ‘his people’ were. He wanted to know where they were, who sent to Earth, and why he’d had to grow up isolated and alone. But then he’d dug an ancient spaceship out of the ice and come face to face with the last survivors of Krypton.

 

General Zod and his followers.

 

And in an instant all the childish notions of ‘his people’ were dashed.

 

“Can I tell you something Bruce?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Of course. Of course he said yes. There was no way this man would turn down an opportunity to learn something about him which might be useful one day.

 

“My birth father did something to me,” Clark told him. “I’m not sure how but… I think he uploaded some data into me. Something General Zod called ‘The Codex’.”

 

Bruce was listening.

 

“I’m not sure, it was never really explained to me, but I believe it’s the blueprint of a Kryptonian generation. If I somehow take it out of myself and upload it into a…” he didn’t want to call it a ‘mothership’. That made him feel too much like a green skin, UFO, _Independence Day_ sort of alien. “…ship with a birthing pool,” he said instead. “It will make a generation of Kryptonians. That was why General Zod wanted the ship. That was why he wanted me. He wanted to extract the Codex. He wanted to recreate the Kryptonian race.” A long pause. “I don’t want that,” Clark said. “Earth is my home planet. Not Krypton. I don’t want that ship.”

 

Bruce’s studied him, a strange look shining in his eye. “I’m sure the inhabitants of Nanda Parbat will be happy to hear that.”


	8. Seeing

Clark woke slowly, enjoying the sun against his skin, the fabric beneath him, and calming _thud thud thud_ of a nearby heartbeat.

 

He felt good. Not exhausted, not shaking off the tail end of an ugly dream, not roused by the screams of a nearby disaster, but… restored. Like he’d finally slept, _really_ slept, for the first time in a long time.

 

And, the heartbeat in his ears told him he hadn’t slept alone.

 

_Lois._

 

He reached toward the sound, wanting to feel the softness of her skin, the silk of her hair, the electric energy of her life…

 

Instead his hand slipped off the edge of his platform, a disorientating drop.

 

He frowned, opened one eye, then the other.

 

He wasn’t lying in bed next to Lois.

 

He wasn’t even on bare earth or on the squeaky mattress in his mother’s house.

 

He was on a sofa. Sleek and black.

 

He blinked and looked around the unfamiliar room. Stark dressings, glass walls, and there, lying face down on a second identical sofa, parallel to his, was Bruce.

 

Clark sat up suddenly.

 

He’d fallen asleep at Bruce’s apartment. He hadn’t meant to do that. He hadn’t even planned on staying once he’d found out the Justice League meeting wasn’t going ahead. But he had. Why?

 

The answer to that sat came in the form of several empty wine bottles sitting on the small dark wood coffee tale between them.

 

Jesus.

 

Had they really drunk all that? Or was it mostly him? He hoped it was mostly him, had a feeling it was, but despite that he knew Bruce hadn’t been going slow or steady either. No, by the time they’d moved from the dining table to the lounge area Bruce had been well and truly drunk.

 

Clark hadn’t been. His powers made that impossible. But sitting with the other man, quietly sharing space, letting himself read and respond to Bruce’s intoxication… maybe, in the moment, he’d been able to trick his brain into feeling something similar.

 

And it had been… nice. To forget about saving people and about pretending to be happy for a few hours and just… let go.

 

But now it was over and he needed to get back.

 

He stood slowly, careful not to make any noise that would disturb the other man.

 

Not that he thought it would be easy to disturb him.

 

Bruce was breathing slowly and deep, his normally immaculate hair a mess of silver around his head, and limbs thrown wide in a messy sprawl. He was still wearing his silk shirt and black pants from the night before, and hadn’t bothered to take off his shoes before collapsing onto the sofa. But, too be fair, neither had Clark. He was still in full Superman regalia, boots and all.

 

That was good, he told himself. It meant he didn’t have to find his clothes or get changed to leave. But could he just leave without saying goodbye? After spending at least the last twelve hours with the man that felt… wrong, somehow. Rude. But surely waking him just to tell him he was going wasn’t any better.

 

He pushed aside that feeling and walked across the room. His hand was on the doorhandle when it happened.

 

“Thank you,” Bruce said into the cushions, so softly if Clark didn’t have super hearing he was sure he would have missed it.

 

He turned his head. “Bruce?”

 

The man slowly lifted his head, eyes dark and shadowed. “Thank you,” he said again, louder this time, “for coming to my Justice League meeting.”

 

What could he say to that? “It was the least I could do.”

 

Bruce looked strangely unhappy about that statement. If he was, he didn’t say anything. But then, if he’d learnt anything about the other man he’d learnt that saying something wasn’t exactly Bruce’s style.

 

Clark opened the door, stepped on the balcony, and looked up into the sky.

 

Then he hesitated.

 

A glance back inside told him Bruce was still watching. Waiting for him to leave, probably wondering why Clark hadn’t already. Clark was wondering the same thing himself.

 

“Hey,” he called out. “If you ever have another Justice League meeting don’t forget to invite me.”

 

A strange look passed across the other man’s eyes. “I won’t.”

 

“Good.”

 

Bruce still hadn’t moved, his body sprawled and hair flopping down across his brow. It was hard, in that moment, to remember who he was. Batman. The man who had branded criminals to be slaughtered in the prison yard, who had killed men just for standing between him and what he wanted, who had held a kryptonite spear to his throat… tired, hungover, and slumped across a sofa.

 

Vulnerable, he realised. This was the first time he had ever seen Bruce look vulnerable. This and the estranged moment when he first walked into the apartment and seen him sitting alone at the dining room table.

 

_After all these years, you would think I would be used to failure._

 

“Good,” Clark said again. “Yes that’s… Good.”

 

He left… but he didn’t stop looking. There were sides of this man he didn’t know, sides he hadn’t cared to know, and now… now he felt like he was seeing the man behind the cowl for the first time... and what he saw left him curious.


	9. Pieces of a Man

Bruce was right.

 

Nanda Parbat was built on, in, and around the ancient wreck of a Kryptonian spacecraft. He was also right about the monks – if you could call them that – using the birthing pool. It had been deliberately energised by the ship’s power core and frothed and fizzled an eerie green deep in the bowls of the earth. Heavily guarded, surrounded by carvings of gods and demons, and adjacent to a lavish bedroom.

 

No doubt the cult leader’s residence.

 

Clark hovered high above the clouds, watched the monks train in what could only be described as killing tactics, and wondered not for the first time why Bruce told him about this place.

 

He’d told Clark he’d thought he would be interested. Maybe that was true. But it still didn’t explain Bruce’s motives. Not really. After all, in admitting he knew about this place – trained here even – he admitted something dark about himself. He admitted he was everything Clark had been planning on accusing him for being in his article. He admitted he wasn’t a hero, but a criminal. A killer.

 

Why would he do that just to satisfy a potential but unproven interest Clark may have had in Kyrptonian wrecks?

 

Had he hoped Clark would be too blinded by the prize to take notice? Did he think Clark would want to take the ship from the monks? To rip it from the earth the way he’d ripped the other one from the ice?

 

Clark didn’t think so. Despite his suspicion that there was no love lost between Bruce and this cult of killers Occam’s razor told him this wasn’t an elaborate ploy to trick Superman into helping Batman overthrow an ancient order of assassins.

 

No. This was more personal than that.

 

This was another ‘good business move’. Another thing Bruce was doing to try and win Superman’s loyalty. His confession, just like the lie he’d told outside Clark’s mother’s, something he assumed Clark didn’t have the intelligence to fault. Bruce was trying to trick him, to own him. That’s what all this was about.

 

Except… maybe he was wrong… about everything.

 

The night he’d spend with Bruce hadn’t felt like a trick or a game. In fact, it felt like the opposite. It felt like a rare moment in time when all motives and masks were put aside. And under the mask he hadn’t seen Batman, the criminal killer trying to pull on his puppet strings, but Bruce, a man defeated by his failure to organise a meeting. A meeting which, had it been successful, would have meant a dedicated team of protectors of Earth.

 

Maybe none of what Bruce did was really what he thought it was.

 

Maybe Bruce was just trapped, isolated, and alone… but still trying to do the right thing. Just like him.

 

He left Nanda Parbat and headed back towards America. When he arrived he swooped low over Gotham, listening for the shouts and screams that gave away Batman’s position last time he was here. There were none. Frowning he scanned the streets looking for the distinctive car or for the black pronged cape. He didn’t find them.

 

It was only when he turned his gaze to the ominous shape of Wayne Enterprises that he finally spotted him.

 

Bruce wasn’t Batman tonight. He was just Bruce the CEO, sitting at his desk, drinking coffee despite the late hour, and arguing over the phone with someone about satieties and liability. It was strangely humbling to remember Bruce, and the rest of the Justice League, all had lives outside of their hero personas. Lives that consumed most of their time.

 

He was the only one that didn’t have a human identity.

 

He let himself drift away from Gotham until he was over Metropolis. He hadn’t been here in a long time. There was no need to come here now. The Daily Planet, the crashed Kryptonian ship with its own bubbling birthing pool, and the memorial to Superman all unpleasant reminders… but not as painful as the apartment he used to rent with Lois or the woman herself, sitting in a simple but expensive looking suite while she watched TV.

 

A quiz show. She always liked quiz shows. Was good at them too. _Way_ better than him even when he used his super speed to dash into the other room and look up the answers.

 

 _God_ , he wanted to fly through the window and sit beside her. He wanted her to laugh at him and tell him to stop hogging the popcorn. He wanted to be with her and forget that they were ever apart.

 

But, he didn’t think whoever owned the strange apartment would be happy to come home to his girlfriend watching TV with her dead alien lover.

 

He cursed quietly to himself and circled back to Gotham.

 

He needed to not watch Lois from afar. That would drive him insane.

 

Instead kept flying – pausing only to check on Bruce who was still arguing on the phone – until he found a couple who had driven their car into a lake and were desperately trying to rescue their baby from the backseat before the sinking vehicle filled with water. He dropped into the scene, hauled the two desperate and already exhausted adults out of the water before they drowned themselves, then dived beneath the car and carried the whole thing to the shore.

 

The baby was crying but still dry when he set the vehicle on land.

 

He noticed but didn’t comment on the anti-alien and anti-immigrant stickers plastered across the rear bumper.

 

He just smiled, told the thankful couple to be more careful, and took off.

 

In the days that followed that became his routine. He helped people, smiled, and gave the simplest most noncontroversial advice he could before leaving quick enough to avoid being asked for an autograph or a selfie. It was the same pattern as before. Superman. Twenty four seven. But, if his twelve hour long power nap at Bruce’s apartment had taught him one thing, it was that, even if he didn’t need sleep, he needed downtime.

 

Time where he didn’t smile, didn’t save people, didn’t pretend to be a hero.

 

As much as he loved his mother he couldn’t have that time with her. She still wanted him to smile, to not talk about being dead, and would offer him her food when he didn’t eat. He couldn’t spend that time in Metropolis either or he would look at Lois.

 

So he spent it in Gotham, watching Bruce, trying to figure him out behind all the shifting perceptions he had. Was he the Batman? A man who hunted criminals without mercy through the streets of Gotham? A man who had tried to kill him with something between a smile and a snarl on his face? A man who was as much a monster as those he fought? Or was he the puppet master? A man who had bought a bank but really bought Superman? A man who had assembled a team of super powered people to fight for him? A man who wasn’t afraid to use dangerous alien technology to resurrect the dead? Or was he the man who had sat across the table from him drinking too much wine?

 

Or… was he some combination of the three? If so, where did those facets of his personality intercept? How did he reconcile them? Who was he really, under it all?

 

Was he an enemy? A threat? A friend? Or something... else?


	10. The Things We Learn

He didn’t watch Bruce often. Truth was, he barely watched him at all. But, in the weeks that followed, the small glances he stole into the other man’s life taught him more than he ever thought he wanted to know about Bruce Wayne.

 

He learnt that he was renovating his family’s ancestral house, a crumbling mansion in the middle of a field with an embellished W above the door. Alfred was taking creative control of that project, determined to restore the Wayne Estate to its former glory. Bruce seemed more interested in creating a new base of operations big enough to house more than just himself which was… interesting. Perhaps he wanted it to become new Justice League base. If Clark was honest he didn’t see that happening. Most the Justice League members had no business in Gotham and while he was sure the renovated house would be lovely he doubted anyone would want to move or spend much time in it.

 

This was, of course, assuming the Justice League was actually a thing. Given the failure of their first meeting Clark suspected it wasn’t. While they teamed up to fight off Steppenwolf there was no reason for them to band together outside of that crisis.

 

Still, Bruce seemed determined and Alfred eager. He found himself hoping it would all come together despite his reservations.

 

But that wasn’t all he learnt about Bruce.

 

He learnt that man spend very little time as Batman, only ever putting on the cape and cowl when the Police Commissioner called him or when an investigation came to a head. He learnt that, despite what most people seemed to believe, Bruce cared deeply about his company and the people that worked there. He learnt that Bruce refused to rebuild Wayne Tower in Metropolis after so many people died there during General Zod’s invasion. He learnt that the man didn’t know how to cook and would either get ridiculously expensive food brought to him or get Alfred to prepare him a meal. He learnt the man typically went to sleep shortly before sunrise and woke up around midday.

 

He learnt that Bruce was still mourning the loss of his parents and sometimes went to their graves, not with any flowers, not with anything to say, but just to stand over them for a few brief moments. He learnt there may have been another loss. A more recent one. But he couldn’t see a grave and didn’t know if maybe he’d misinterpreted the situation.

 

And finally, he learnt that Bruce had sex.

 

A lot of sex.

 

He had always suspected as much. The man was too good at his playboy routine for it to be entirely an act. But being confronted with the other man’s sexual prowess head on was oddly intimidating and made Clark painfully aware he’d only ever had sex with three people and even then that assumed you counted mutual masturbation with Pete sex which he was pretty sure Pete didn’t, even if Clark did.

 

During his observation of Bruce Clark quickly taught himself not to check in on Bruce before or after any charity events, galas, or parties and always to listen before he looked to make sure he wasn’t going to see something that wasn’t for him to see. Even so, more than once he had peeked in on Bruce only to look away having caught an eyeful of him entwined with a beautiful woman or, on one occasion, a beautiful man.

 

Which… okay… that was… something else he learnt about Bruce.

 

However, in spite of the man's apparent openness, his sexual exploits came in waves. Bruce would go through brief phases of hyper sexuality where sex seemed like all he cared about followed by weeks of absolutely nothing.

 

It was strange.

 

But, perhaps it was indicative of Bruce. The man operated in extremes transforming from a black suited demon that could beat down gods to a person defeated by his own inability to draw people to him.

 

So it made sense… in a way. It was okay… even if it was none of his business to judge in the first place.

 

It was around that time he started to feel guilty for watching Bruce. It was an invasion of privacy, he knew, but it was also one he had inadvertently been doing to almost everyone he’d ever met since he was a child. He grew up knowing if Lana and Pete were to free to hang out not by phoning them… but by looking over his shoulder and checking. He knew what sex was long before his parents sat him down and told him just because he’d seen it, seen how common it was, and decided it was another strange thing adults did. He’d sat in class and watched farmers work miles away, or listened to conversations in the local stores. It was natural for him to use his powers to know what was happening around him. It was normal… even though it wasn’t.

 

Perhaps that guilt was what drove him to do what he did next.

 

Or perhaps it was simply that he was starved of human contact and Bruce was the only person he could be ‘not happy’ around who wouldn’t try to cheer him up.

 

But he started dropping in on Bruce.

 

He would slip into fights, stop a bullet or two, and stay still just long enough for Bruce to see him before vanishing. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he wanted to see if he could ruffle the bat’s feathers like he had the first time he caught a bullet for him. Maybe he wanted to Bruce to scowl and tell him about his can-withstand-normal-calibre-at-point-blank-range armour.

 

Or maybe he just wanted Bruce to know he was there.

 

Just to alleviate some of his guilt.

 

Just to have some fun.

 

Just to – for a fraction of a second – have Bruce meet his gaze when he watched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I really hope you've been enjoying this fic so far and thanks so much to those who have left comments, kudos, and bookmarks. We're coming up to the first major 'shift' in the story (which I am pretty sure everyone can see coming) but before we turn up the heat I am going to have to take a week off from writing this. I am in the process of editing one of my original works for publication and it's going to need to take priority for the next few days.
> 
> Thanks so much for your support and your patience! I look forward to reading your comments!


	11. Trust

Bruce was struggling to break into a safe. Clark had never seen Batman struggle to do anything before and studied with a strange fascination the tightness in the other man’s lips, the pucker of his brow, and the frustrated hunch of his shoulders. He wasn’t sure why but there was something mesmerising about the man in that moment.

 

Something Clark couldn’t put a name on.

 

Perhaps it was Bruce’s irritation. So obvious, so real, and so different from the emotions Bruce would display when Clark dove down to ‘save’ him from another goon with a gun. In those instances Bruce would meet his eyes, grunt, and turn away.

 

He always thought that was an annoyed dismissal.

 

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was an acknowledgement.

 

Maybe it was a greeting.

 

Maybe it was a thank you.

 

Maybe Bruce hadn’t seen Clark’s interference as a hindrance but as help. Help he was grateful to have.

 

The safe – a small metal box armed with enough new age mechanics to look like Cyborg’s little brother – gave a beep as it, once again, rejected Batman’s code. With a curse Bruce shoved whatever device he was trying to use to hack into the safe’s systems back into his belt and turned away with an angry snap of his cape. “Superman!”

 

Clark jumped. Did Bruce just…?

 

“I know you’re there,” Bruce growled. “Get down here.”

 

He debated not going. He really did. But, after weeks of dropping into the man’s missions, pretending he wasn’t there felt petty and immature. A child refusing to come out of their room.

 

He dropped, flew through the open balcony door Bruce had entered through, and stopped with a gush of air beside the other man.

 

If his sudden appearance shocked Bruce the man didn’t show it.

 

“Open this.”

 

“Why?”

 

Low. “You know why.”

 

He did. He’d been watching Bruce enough to know exactly what this mission was about. Bruce was looking for a ledger, one that detailed the inner workings of a human trafficking ring. The police hadn’t been able to get a hold of it - there was a mole in the district attorney’s office that was tipping off the traffickers whenever a new search warrant was issued – so the commissioner had contacted Batman.

 

It was a surprisingly official and mutually beneficial arrangement. Not at all like he’d imagined the relationship between police and vigilante when he was investigating Batman for his article.

 

There was only one problem.

 

“The ledger isn’t here.”

 

“What?”

 

“Commissioner Gordon was wrong,” Clark told him. “The ledger isn’t here.”

 

Bruce’s eyes were penetrating behind his cowl. “Then what’s inside the safe?”

 

“Nothing. It’s a red herring.”

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“I do.”

 

“How?”

 

“I can see through most material.”

 

His ‘x-ray vision’ as he’d called it when he was younger was not one of his well-known powers. He liked it that way. His life was hard enough without people thinking he was reading confidential documents or spying on them in the shower.

 

Bruce sighed and bowed his head, the frustration in his body fading, giving way to defeat. “Of course you can.”

 

Then, to Clark’s surprise, he started walking away.

 

“Wait,” Clark called. “Don’t you want me to open it?”

 

Bruce paused. Looked over his shoulder. “You just told me it was empty.”

 

“Yes but…” he didn’t think Bruce would trust him. “Is there anything else I can do?”

 

Bruce turned to face him, interested. “You want to help on this case?”

 

“I just…” he trailed off. What was he doing? He didn’t want to help Batman. He didn’t want anything to do with Batman. This was the man who branded people so they would be stabbed to death in a prison yard. The man who had tried to kill him. The man who had killed others all in the pursuit of ‘Justice’. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to help you.” He lifted off the ground and was about to fly off when Bruce spoke.

 

“Superman.”

 

Clark paused, hovering in the air. “Yes?”

 

“Can we talk?”

 

“We are.”

 

“Not here. It’s not safe. My office at dawn?”

 

Clark wasn’t sure what he should say. He’d just told Bruce he didn’t want to help him. But would he be willing to talk to him? “Maybe,” he answered. “I might be busy.”

 

“I understand.”

 

Clark hovered awkwardly for moment before finally leaving in a rush of air. He left Gotham. He wasn’t sure why. No one was crying out for him, no great disaster was in need of his attention. And, even if he pretended it wasn’t true, he knew he would be back in only a few hours.


	12. Truth

Bruce’s office was on the very top of Wayne Enterprises, the original Gotham building, smaller and more old-fashioned than the one that had been destroyed in Metropolis but still tall enough to stand in the financial district and have a view of the river.

 

Bruce was looking at that view. Elbows resting on the upper balcony’s railing, silver hair and loose white shirt moving in the wind, face lit with the first light of dawn. He looked like something out of a goddamn perfume commercial. Or, he would have, if it wasn’t for the heavy shadows under his eyes.

 

Clark slipped silently out of the sky to stand beside him.

 

“Did you find the ledger?”

 

Bruce looked up, took him in, and then turned back towards the sunrise. “I thought you didn’t want to help.”

 

Clark didn’t have a response to that. “What did you want to talk about?” He asked instead.

 

Clark could guess what Bruce was going to say.

 

He was going to ask him about his x-ray vision. It was a power the other man didn’t know Clark had until tonight and no doubt was keen to test and understand better so he could calibrate it into his Justice League strategy… or his ‘in case I decide to kill him again’ strategy.

 

But, if that was true, Bruce was playing the long game because it wasn’t the question that came out of his lips.

 

“Where are you living?”

 

“I…” Clark blinked. “What?”

 

“Where are you living?” Bruce asked again.

 

The question took Clark off guard and it took him a while to formulate an answer. “With my mother,” he lied.

 

Bruce finally turned his body away from the sun to look directly at him. “Where are you really living?”

 

“With my mother,” he said again, firmer this time.

 

Bruce shook his head. “No you’re not. I’ve been trying to contact you through her. She told me she hasn’t seen you in weeks… but not to worry. You do this sometimes.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Disappear,” Bruce said matter-of-factly. “She said when your father died you left for a very long time with barely any contact. Just a postcard once every couple of months. She said, at least now, she can read about you in the news and know you’re okay.”

 

A pang of guilt trickled through him.

 

“You’re not living in Smallville,” Bruce continued. “And I know you’re not in Metropolis.”

 

Softly. “How do you know that?”

 

Bruce studied him before answering. “I’ve noticed, over the last month, Superman’s appearances have been far more numerous and far more scattered than usual. Before you died Superman sightings were notably higher in Metropolis than they were anywhere else. You responded to more emergencies there too, and were quicker to arrive on scene if something happened in North America. But recently, no one has been able to predict where you will be or what you’ll respond to first. It’s as if you used to live in Metropolis, able to hear things that happened there first, but now you’re constantly moving, never staying in the same place twice.” A pause. “However, in the last few weeks, there has been a slight increase in your presence in North America again. Mainly on the East Coast. I haven’t heard of any new sightings in Metropolis, in fact you seem to be avoiding the city, but there have been several in Gotham.”

 

Clark wondered if those sightings were from Gothamites, or Bruce himself. He crossed his arms. “I haven’t moved to Gotham.”

 

Bruce’s gaze didn’t relent. “Where are you living?” He asked for the fourth time.

 

Clark didn’t say anything.

 

Bruce let that silence stretch for a painfully long time before breaking it. “You’re a lot like your mother, Clark.”

 

Suspiciously. “How so?”

 

“She also didn’t want to admit she was homeless.”

 

“I’m not…!”

 

Bruce pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and passed it to Clark without a word.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“A home.”

 

Clark stared at him for a moment and then ripped open the envelope. Inside were a couple of keys and a sheet of paper. On the paper was an address.

 

Clark felt sick. “This is your apartment.”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said. “The time you spent there following the Justice League meeting was one of the longest periods between Superman sightings since you returned from the dead. I can only assume that means you didn’t mind spending time there. I am going to be staying in the city while investigating this case and would like to move back into Wayne Manor once it’s completed. You can have the apartment.”

 

_Have._

 

The meaning of that one little word didn’t escape him. Bruce wasn’t saying he could rent or occupy the space. He was giving it to him.

 

“I don’t want it,” he said, voice tight.

 

“Then don’t stay there,” Bruce responded. “I am not forcing this on you, Clark. It’s there if you want it. But if you don’t, then that’s okay. Either way, I have already moved out my things.”

 

In an instant Clark realised what this was. It was another power play, just like buying the bank to save his mother and telling him about the Kryptonian ship in Tibet. Bruce was attempting to seed and cultivate his loyalty, to turn Superman into another tool on Batman’s belt.

 

And, Clark realised with a sickening lurch, it had been working. He’d been helping Batman. He thought he had been the one in control, dropping from the sky to annoy Bruce by stopping criminals he was sure the other man could stop on his own… except isn’t that exactly the sort of thing Batman would want Superman to do? To catch bullets and take out the goons so he could focus on the mission at hand? And now he’d even dropped out of the sky to help when Bruce told him to. He’d obeyed an order.

 

This wasn’t a gift. This was a reward. Bruce was rewarding him for helping Batman.

 

A dog getting a treat for sitting on command.

 

He crumbled the paper in his hand.

 

Bruce’s eyes moved to that paper and then back up to his face. Not angry, not annoyed, perhaps not even confused. Observing, calculating, re-evaluating.

 

“God damn you,” Clark said.

 

Bruce tipped his head to the side. “Would you prefer a different property?”

 

“No,” he shoved the envelope back towards him. “I don’t want anything from you.”

 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed.

 

“You hate me,” Clark reminded him. “You wanted me dead. You got your wish. Now you’re showing me in gifts so… what? I’ll forget everything you did to me?”

 

Softly. “No. I don’t expect you to forget. Ever.”

 

“You resurrected me,” Clark snapped. “You bought a bank to help my mother, you told me about a second crashed Kryptonian space ship, and now you’re trying to give me a home. I… I can’t believe I fell for it. I knew from the moment you bought that damn bank I knew what you were doing.”

 

Bruce’s expression hadn’t changed.

 

“I’m not letting you do this. I’m not going to be in debt to you.”

 

Softly. “You think I am trying to indenture you to me?”

 

“Are you _really_ going to stand there and tell me you’re not?”

 

Without a hint of shame. “No Clark, I’m not.”

 

“You’re unbeliev—”

 

“I am trying to _pay off_ my debt to you.”

 

Clark stopped. “What are you talking about?”

 

Bruce stood, seemingly considering his words for a long time before saying them. Finally, he spoke. “When you first met me I believed the world wasn’t worth saving. I believed men, at their core, were evil and the only good I could do was brand the evilest of them so they could taste just a _fraction_ of the suffering they caused before they died.” Bruce looked up and Clark saw that anger again, the anger he had seen in Bruce’s body as he fought the thugs in the warehouse. “Then I met you,” Bruce said and some of that anger seemed to fade, “a man with the power of a god, who used his powers to help others. I couldn’t believe what you were, _who_ you were. I couldn’t accept that you didn’t have the same darkness inside, the same selfishness, the same anger, the same greed. I didn’t believe it was possible. So I let myself be manipulated by a jealous boy with a god complex and I killed you.”

 

“Luthor’s monster killed me,” Clark corrected him. “Not you.”

 

“If I hadn’t played my part, a puppet dancing when my strings were pulled, Luthor would never have been able to create that creature. You would never have died, the world would never have lost Superman, and…”

 

“I would be with Lois,” Clark realised. “I would be with her right now.”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said. “I did that. And I will never be able to repay that debt.”

 

Clark curled his hands into fists and turned his face aside. It was a long time before he felt confident in his own voice to speak again. Even then, it was only one word. “Fuck.”

 

They stood in silence for a long time.

 

The sun rose, the city beneath them woke. Still, neither of them said a thing.

 

Then, without a word Clark pushed the envelope and the key back into Bruce’s hand and flew away.


	13. The Art of Avoidance

He stayed away from Gotham after that, focusing instead on the thousands of crises happening around the world. War, famine, sickness, and death. It felt like the apocalypse but without an end. The planet kept spinning, the world kept going. And, despite it all, he kept thinking about Bruce.

 

It wasn’t that he was angry at him.

 

Not really.

 

It was just… He had nothing to say to him. Nothing that would make the rock in his belly go away.

 

It wasn’t Bruce’s confession. It wasn’t even his own realisation that he had misjudged the man. It was the wretched understanding that if things had played out even slightly differently – if they’d met in a better way, if they’d realised sooner that they didn’t have to be enemies – he could still be with Lois.

 

Maybe they would have gotten those promotions and saved up enough for a trip where they didn’t have to report on anything. Maybe they would be married and living in that will-be-amazing-once-renovated apartment they found within walking distance from the Daily Planet. Maybe they would even be talking about converting one of the spare rooms into something else. Something like a nursery.

 

The thought was like a knife to the chest.

 

These were the thoughts he’d been stamping down on since he’d come back from the dead. The thoughts that used to make him smile as he carried groceries through the busy streets of Metropolis or flew home after saving some people from a fire or a flood. His hopes and dreams. His life. His world.

 

He’d lost his whole world when he’d died… and he’d never let himself think about it. Instead, whenever Lois entered into his awareness he’d focused on Bruce. What was Bruce doing? Why was he doing it? Was he trying to manipulate Clark? What was his ultimate goal?

 

Now, robbed of his mistrust he had nothing. Nothing but shame as he thought of Bruce’s face as they stood on the balcony.

 

He thought about the way Bruce had looked at him, expectant but also oddly dejected as Clark had crumbled up the sheet of paper in his hand. He thought about the frown Bruce had worn as Clark accused him of trying to manipulate him. He thought of Bruce’s confession… the rawness, the honesty, the brutal self-deprecating truth…

 

It made it terrifyingly easy to forgive him, not because he believed Bruce deserved forgiveness, but because he didn’t have the energy to hold onto his mistrust and uncertainty when it became painfully clear he could never hate Bruce has much as Bruce hated himself.

 

But that wasn’t all Bruce had said. He had also said one other thing… about his mother.

 

_She told me she hasn’t seen you in weeks._

 

That was a problem he could do something about.

 

The flight to Smallville was quick and easy.

 

Actually pushing open the door was hard. He wasn’t sure why.

 

His mother hadn’t wasted time making the newly renovated farmhouse her own. Family pictures swallowed whole walls, furniture from every era filled the open spaces, and the computer had moved from the logical place in the study to the kitchen counter.

 

When he walked in she was on that computer, the light of news articles reflected in her glasses.

 

“Clark!” She lurched to her feet as she saw him and rushed forward wrap him in a tight hug. “Oh Lord. You’re all wet. Is it raining outside?”

 

It wasn’t. Clark had flown through the low lying cloud without thinking about what he would look like when he arrived.

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Oh… well, come and have a hot shower. The water pressure is marvellous now. I’ll lay out some dry clothes for you. God knows when last you took off that super suit.”

 

Half an hour later he was in jeans for the first time in months and was sitting with his mother watching a loud family quiz show. She’d heated up some chicken soup and he was slowly drinking it out of an oversized mug.

 

He wasn’t relaxed. Beneath his slumped posture and oversized clothes he was stiff and uncomfortable, just like he was when he smiled for the reporter’s cameras. Pretending to be happy. That was what he was doing. He was pretending to be happy, for his mother.

 

He could do that, once in a while, to make sure she was happy.

 

“…Pete’s bought three of the subdivisions. _Three_. That’s almost six hundred acres on top of what he already has. Old Farmer Rod would be fuming if he was alive to see it. You know how he hated new blood buying up property in this town, now Pete’s got most of his.”

 

“The Ross family have been in Smallville for thirty years,” Clark said.

 

“Exactly,” his mother stirred her own cup of soup. “Only thirty years and he owns a lot of land. You know how things are here Clark, if your family doesn’t have at least two generations in the local cemetery you’re a new comer in this town.”

 

“Hm.”

 

They lapsed into silence for a moment, watching as one team won a new car. Clark had never realised it before, but he hated people who screamed when they were happy.

 

“Did Bruce ever get in contact with you?” His mother asked suddenly, turning to look at him instead of the show. “He’s been phoning an awful lot. You know I told you should get a phone.”

 

“I can’t fly around with a phone.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“The G forces. It would rip it to shreds.” Not exactly true. Not exactly a lie.

 

“Oh… well. You could keep it in your apartment. Where are you staying now?” It was a loaded question.

 

“Here and there.”

 

“You know Bruce told me if you needed—”

 

“I don’t want to talk about Bruce.” It came out harsher than he’d intended and for a moment he was reminded of their awkward meal at Mama Jo’s. He felt like he did then, angry and brutish for yelling at his mother over a fish. “I just…” he bowed his head. “We’ve not been getting along recently.”

 

“Oh?” His mother looked genuinely upset to hear this. “He cares about you a lot, Clark.”

 

It wasn’t what he’d expected her to say and for a moment he didn’t have an answer. “He doesn’t. He’s just feeling guilty.”

 

“What for?”

 

“He thinks he let me down.”

 

“Did he?”

 

Clark thought about that for a long time before answering. “Yes. But I let him down too.” He’d decided Bruce was an enemy before he’d even met him, just like Bruce had done to him… and that was why what happened happened. If he had investigated further, if he’d spoken to Bruce when he pulled him out of the batmobile, if he’s approached Bruce a different way when Luthor had his mother prisoner… none of this would have happened.

 

Bruce was guilty. But he wasn’t the only one.

 

“So you’re even?” His mother asked.

 

“I guess.”

 

For a while that seemed like it was the end of the conversation. They finished their soup, the families on the TV finished winning their cars, and then they were in the kitchen cutting up meat for Abigail’s dinner.

 

“Remember in elementary school when you, Lana, and Pete used to have fights?” His mother asked. “You would sit alone in your room until one or both of them would show up, knock on your door, and ask you to come out and play?”

 

He bowed his head and kept chopping.

 

“If Bruce doesn’t know where you live he can’t come and knock on your door.”

 

“Mum…”

 

“I’m just saying, Clark,” she patted him on the shoulder. “It might be time for you to be the bigger man and go knock on his door.”


	14. Calling a Truce

His mother was right. Of course she was right. She was always right when it came to this sort of thing.

 

But, even if she was right, she still didn’t know the whole story. She didn’t know that Bruce had tried to kill him, that if it wasn’t for her name he would have succeeded. She didn’t know Clark had been writing an article that would have exposed the Batman and torn apart Bruce’s life. She didn’t know that they had ever been enemies… let alone enemies that hated each other enough to wage war.

 

Because it had been a war. A small, pathetic, and ultimately pointless war. But a war nonetheless.

 

And, despite fighting on the same side to bring down Doomsday and Steppenwolf, they had never officially called a truce.

 

He told himself that was what he was doing as he flew back into Gotham. A quick informal end to the hostilities between them.

 

That plan was shattered when he arrived on the scene.

 

The batmobile was on fire. The batmobile was on fire and flying through the air. The batmobile was on fire, flying through the air, and Bruce was inside it.

 

Clark didn’t have time to think. He just moved, cutting through the air fast enough to leave several sonic booms behind him. He ripped the vehicle in half, yanked the man free of the flames, and held him as Bruce’s body instinctually fought against the sudden embrace.

 

The car crashed onto the street below and for a horrible moment Clark realised if he hadn’t been here Bruce would have been in that crash. This wasn’t a bullet that would have bounced off his armour or a thug that would have taken Bruce mere moments to knock out. If he hadn’t been here Bruce would be dead.

 

“What the hell are you doing?!”

 

Bruce’s eyes snapped to his, wild and bright behind the mask. “No! Let me go! He’s getting away! I… _ah_ …” Bruce’s face twisted in pain and for the first time Clark realised he could smell burning. Not burning rubber, but flesh. The smell faint enough to be undetectable to a normal human but, to him, it was nauseatingly strong.

 

He looked down the other man’s body and quickly saw the smoking patch on Bruce’s arm. The heat of the flames had burnt through his armour leaving a small exposed patch of raw red skin. Clark blew on it with just enough ice breath to stop the burning as Bruce snarled and writhed in his arms.

 

“S-Super… ah!”

 

“Mr Kent,” Alfred’s voice sounded relieved over Batman’s headpiece. “Thank goodness. I have medical supplies here. Please…”

 

Clark was with him before he finished that sentence, Bruce still gasping and struggling in his arms. He pushed him down onto a cot and ripped aside the burnt armour, thankful it hadn’t melted into his skin. Alfred came up beside him to inspect the damage.

 

“Thank you Mr Kent.”

 

“No,” Bruce snarled and ripped off his cowl. “I had things under control.”

 

“You almost died.”

 

“I was about to eject.”

 

“You almost died,” Clark said again. “What the hell were you doing? If I hadn’t intervened—”

 

“If you hadn’t intervened I would have stopped him.”

 

“Who? I thought you were looking for a ledger.”

 

“I found it. And the accountant.”

 

“You’re telling me an accountant did this to you?”

 

“I’m telling you this is more than just a simple human trafficking case and…” Bruce gasped as Alfred smeared some clear substance on the wound and started bandaging it with brutal efficiency. They stayed silent while the butler worked, the savage light in Bruce’s eyes slowly fading until he was, once again, unreadable.

 

When Alfred finished he looked at Clark and tapped Bruce on the shoulder. A message, though Clark couldn’t guess as to what it was.

 

Bruce grunted in confirmation and climbed stiffly off the cot. “No. I won’t be needing that.”

 

“Very good, sir. As for tonight’s little mishap?”

 

“He’ll be long gone by now. We’ll pick up the trail tomorrow.”

 

“I cannot wait.” The man said dryly, shot Clark one more look before gathering together his things and tactfully slipping from the room. A room Clark was only now just getting a good look at. They were in a concrete windowless room which – oh – he’d ripped a hole in the wall as he’d flown in.

 

Apart from that the place was immaculate. Next generation machinery, sleek Spartan furniture, and a medical supply kit that looked ready to service an army.

 

“So, this is your secret base.”

 

“One of them.”

 

Clark turned back to Bruce and saw him leaning stiff and pained against the cot, the bandage around his arm doing little to downplay his battered state. “If this is something more than a human trafficking ring you should call the Justice League.”

 

Bruce’s eyes darkened. “They didn’t want to come to my meeting, why do you think they’d want to come to my fights?”

 

“They fought for you once before.”

 

“I’m not sure it was me they were fighting for.” A pause. “Why are you here Clark?”

 

“I…” his answer stuck in his throat and it was only through sheer force of will that he pushed it out. “I wanted to… start over… with you.”

 

“Start over?”

 

“We’ve not had the best relationship. I want to change that.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything, his face drawn.

 

“I am sorry I thought you were trying to manipulate me.”

 

“Don’t do that.”

 

“What?” Clark asked.

 

“Apologise,” Bruce said, voice low.

 

“You don’t want me to apologise to you?”

 

Bruce shook his head.

 

“Okay,” Clark let that slide. “I just wanted to say I see now you were just trying to help me. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

 

“This is sounding an awful lot like an apology.”

 

“Christ, Bruce. What do you want me to say? Why can’t I apologise to you?”

 

“Because you did nothing wrong.”

 

“I’ve done plenty wrong. You don’t have a monopoly on guilt or regret.”

 

Bruce studied him for a long time then turned around and walked towards the door.

 

Clark bowed his head, feeling both angry and strangely humiliated. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his conversation with Bruce, but this wasn’t it. This wasn’t what he’d wanted when he flew here, or what he expected to feel when it was all over. He’d wanted to apologise, to hear Bruce apologise, to start everything again and do it right this time.

 

And Bruce had thrown that back in his face.

 

“Bruce,” he called out when the man’s hand reached the door handle.

 

Bruce paused.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

The man turned to look at him.

 

Clark held that look, studied him as a strange something passed behind Bruce’s eyes.

 

“Clark?”

 

“Yes Bruce?”

 

“Do you want to get drunk again tonight?”

 

The question was unexpected as the answer that left Clark’s throat before he had time to even think about it. “God yes.”


	15. A Little Stronger Than Wine

They didn’t retire to a secluded sitting room or bar. Instead they stayed where they were, sat in the hole Clark had ripped through the outer wall, and passed a bottle of something-a-little-stronger-than-wine back and forth between them.

 

It was strange drinking without glasses or a table between them. He felt like a teenager who had stolen from his parents’ liquor cabinet to get drunk with his best friend behind the school. But, despite that, the informality was oddly comforting. As was the process of silently passing the bottle. Bruce would take it, hold it, sip it a few times, and then hand it back. Clark would mimic the action, making sure to consume the same amount as Bruce if only to maintain the fantasy that this substance could actually affect him.

 

It was a pattern they maintained until, finally, when they were both sitting a little less stiffly and Bruce’s cheeks were started to fill with colour the other man spoke. “Why did you save me?”

 

Clark’s answer was instant and automatic. “I’m Superman. It’s what I do.”

 

“It really is that simple for you, isn’t it?”

 

Those words should have put his teeth on edge, if spoken by someone else they probably would have. From Bruce it was just an observation as simple as if he were talking about the weather. “Not everything has to be so complicated,” Clark said. “Sometimes there is just right and wrong. Letting you die would have been wrong.”

 

“How can you know that?”

 

Clark remembered the horror and revolution he’d felt as he’d snapped General Zod’s neck. The way the body had fallen limp and heavy to the floor. He remembered the family he’d saved hunched and tear streaked in the corner, not cheering or hugging him like in all the old action movies but staring at him, small and scared, like they expected him to turn on them next. “I just know.” He reached out and took the bottle from Bruce. “Why? What would you have done?”

 

“If I was you? I would have let the man who tried to kill me die.”

 

“I thought you said your hand was on the eject button.”

 

Bruce was silent. Clark wondered if that meant what he’d said before was a lie, or the question wasn’t about the rescue but rather the reasons behind it.

 

“I’m not as good as you think I am,” Clark told him and took a drink from the bottle.

 

“I doubt that.”

 

“You can doubt it all you want, it’s the truth.”

 

Bruce shifted so he was leaning against the inside of the ruined wall, facing Clark. “I had a dream once,” he said, his eyes dark but strangely unguarded. “Or, a nightmare, about what would happen if you ever lost Lois. I imagined you would turn, become something other than Superman.” He shook his head. “But now you have lost Lois and instead you have become _nothing but_ Superman. Even the media outlets that hated you before can’t find fault with you now. Feeding the hungry, curing the sick, helping the desperate…”

 

“That’s just what I do. It’s not what I am.”

 

“What are you then?”

 

Clark stared at the bottle in his hand. It was a hard question to answer. A question that, if he answered honestly, would expose himself to Bruce. But, in a strange twist of fate, the man who had tried to kill him was starting to feel like the safest person in the world to confide in. Or, at least, the only one that would really truly understand. “I’m angry,” Clark said. “I’m sad, I’m selfish and I’m scared. I’m not a god, or a good person. I’m everything you are. And I…” he bowed his head and took a swig from the bottle. “I haven’t been the same since I came back. I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I yelled at my mother over a fish. A goddamned fish. I almost yelled at her again over a sofa and again the other day over nothing at all. Stupid things. I am losing it over _stupid_ things.”

 

“I know what that is,” Bruce told him.

 

Clark did too. “Pit madness,” he muttered. “Like the Tibetan monks told you, from the birthing pool. It hasn’t worn off. Not entirely.”

 

“No,” Bruce said, his voice oddly soft. “What you’re feeling, it’s not madness, Clark. It’s grief. You died. You lost Lois. You’re grieving.”

 

Clark didn’t want to believe it. But, a small wretched part of him remembered what it had been like to stand by and watch his father be swallowed by a tornado. He remembered the weeks and months following that day. He remembered the hopelessness, powerlessness, anger, and confusion. It was sickening similar to what he was feeling now.

 

“Pit madness takes away empathy, Clark,” Bruce told him. “You would feel less, not more.”

 

He choked out a pained laugh. “Sounds nice. Maybe I should take the motherbox and go for another swim.”

 

“Don’t do that.”

 

“I wasn’t actually going to—”

 

“Don’t laugh when things are bad,” Bruce said.

 

Clark tipped his head to the side. “Why? Isn’t laughter the best medicine?”

 

Low. “I don’t like people who laugh when things are bad.” He took back the bottle and they lapsed back into silence.

 

Clark studied him, the dark look in his eye, the loose sprawl of his limbs, the black shape of his suit.

 

“When was the last time you laughed, Bruce?”

 

The man’s eyes slid back to him. “It’s been a while.”


	16. Goodbyes

He half expected the night to end the way their last had. Both of them passed out until noon. Instead – after hours of just sitting beside each other, drinking, and watching the sun rise – Clark helped Bruce onto the medical cot and quietly told him he needed to go.

 

Bruce grunted, slumped down onto the stiff plastic mattress, and simply said, “My arm hurts.”

 

It was as much a goodbye as he was ever going to get.

 

Clark left him, flew out the hole in the wall, and fell into a loose orbit around the planet. He stayed there for a long time thinking about what Bruce had told him, and the hours between conversation where they had barely said anything at all.

 

It was disconcerting to admit but being with Bruce was more comforting than being with his mother. A hell of a lot more. With Bruce he didn’t have to pretend to be happy. He could be sad or angry or annoyed and Bruce would accept that without judgement or distress. For Bruce, he was grieving and Clark behaviour was natural given the circumstances. He didn’t want Clark to smile if that smile wasn’t real. He didn’t want him to laugh unless that laugh was real. He didn’t even want Clark to apologise to him.

 

But when Clark broke composure and swore at him… Bruce had accepted that.

 

Despite what he’d first believed Bruce didn’t want Superman obedient to him. He wanted Clark, the true Clark, even if that truth was sometimes ugly.

 

The thought was a hard one to swallow. As misguided his original mistrust of Bruce was it had at least been simple. But, if he had learnt anything about the other man, it was that Bruce was never and had never been simple. Why would whatever-it-was-they-had-between-them be any different?

 

Clark sighed and turned to fly back down to Earth. He didn’t know where he was going until he was almost there.

 

He swooped between the sparkling new buildings, waved at some kids that stopped on their way to school to stare up at him, and even paused for a moment to look at the crashed Kryptonian ship. Metropolis. He was in Metropolis.

 

And he was here to do something. Something he didn’t think he had the strength to do.

 

He floated down to her window and knocked.

 

Lois was sitting on the bed, hunched over a laptop and typing furiously. She looked up at the sound of his knock, stared at him in shock for a few short seconds, and then threw down her computer hurried to open the latch.

 

“Hey Lo,” he said as the window swung open.

 

She smiled, small and uncertain. “Hello to you too.”

 

It was an old joke, something corny and fun, just like them.

 

He looked at her, no makeup, still in her pyjamas, and with her hair bundled high and messy on the top of her head. She’d never looked more beautiful.

 

“Working from home today?”

 

“I’m on holiday. Writing my memoir.”

 

“Am I in it?”

 

“Clark is. Superman is.”

 

“But not me.” He said it as a joke but it came out sounding terrifyingly serious.

 

Her smile slipped and she leant forward, out of the window. “Don’t worry. I love your mother. I’m not going to reveal anything that would put her in danger.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He loved Lois. Even after all this time he still loved her.

 

He’d loved her from the first moment he’d seen her, fierce and unafraid despite artic winds pulling at her hair and the long toothed officials sneering down their noses at her. That love bloomed when she’d followed him across ice most people would never dare to step foot on into the buried Kryptonian spaceship and let him use his heat vision to stop her bleeding out on the icy floor. He didn’t know why she trusted him. He didn’t trust himself. He’d never cauterised a wound before, he didn’t know if it would work or if he would kill her in the attempt. But she had trusted him and he had saved her.

 

That had been the start.

 

The start of a romance so right they could kiss in the ruined wasteland of a city and somehow make the horror of it fade.

 

Below people were noticing their interaction. They pointed, called out, and took photos but no one close enough to hear what they were saying.

 

Lois looked at them and back to him. “Do you want to come inside?”

 

Clark shook his head. He didn’t want to step foot in the apartment she was living in now, spacious, Spartan, and strange. So different from the one he’d shared with Lois before he’d died and the one they’d dreamed of buying and doing up. “No. It’s okay. I’m just passing through. Thought I would stop by.” He forced a smile. “Besides, I’m not sure your boyfriend would appreciate me being there.”

 

A small frown filtered across her brow. “Clark I…” she trailed off.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Are you… I mean… are you okay?”

 

“I’ve had a hard couple of months,” he admitted.

 

“I bet.” She reached out and gently pushed his hair back from his face. “You’re okay though, right?”

 

He opened his mouth to tell her ‘no’. To tell her about the chaotic sequence of emotions and events that had bombarded him since he’d come back from the dead. But he couldn’t. With a sickening sinking sensation he realised he couldn’t unload onto her. He didn’t have that right. She wasn’t his emotional support. Not anymore.

 

He realised too that he didn’t need her to be his emotional support. He’d already got that, from Bruce.

 

“Yeah,” he lied, voice tight. “I’m getting by.”

 

“That’s good.”

 

They stayed like that for a long time, just looking at each other, all the words that will never be said filling the space between them.

 

“Lo?”

 

“Yes Clark?”

 

“I will always love you,” he told her. “I know we’re over. I know that. I’m not asking to get back together but… that feeling won’t go away. Ever. You’re my first true love. I want you to know that.”

 

“I’ll always love you too,” she said, voice little more than a whisper.

 

“I should go. I’ve got… people to save.”

 

“Wait.” She put a hand on his, holding him to the windowsill. “Before you go, I have something that’s yours.”

 

“Lois. Please don’t give me my ring back.”

 

“No. It’s not that.” She left him for a moment to rummage in the draws built into her bedside table. When she came back she was holding a pair of glasses.

 

He stared.

 

“Your spare,” she said and put them into his palm. “Since I think you lost your others.”

 

“Yes. Yes I have.”

 

“Never forget them, Clark.”

 

“I won’t.”

 

Then she leant forward and kissed him. Soft, chaste, but loving. He heard the people below gasp and a few cameras click.

 

He pulled back. “Wait. They can see us. I…”

 

Lois smirked. “Let them look.”

 

“Anything to sell a memoir?”

 

She laughed at the joke, happy and free. “You got it, Smallville.”

 

Flying away from her hurt. It hurt more than anything he had ever done. But he also felt light in a way he hadn’t been since he’d come back from the dead. Like he’d stabbed himself in the chest but, in doing so, had cut out something dark and unresolved that had been slowly poisoning him from the inside out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a great Christmas guys.


	17. Crossing Boundaries

Bruce was upset.

 

It was obvious from the moment Clark set eyes on him, standing alone in the ruins of Wayne Manor, cursing at himself, and ripping the tattered and weather damaged wallpaper off a wall piece by tiny piece. At this rate it would take him hours just to strip one room. Not that that seemed to be his intention. To Clark it didn't look like Bruce was trying to get the wallpaper off the wall. It looked like he was trying to destroy it.

 

Clark frowned. This was not like the anger Clark was used to seeing from Batman. There was nothing controlled about it. Nothing deep and dark. This was just…

 

“ _Stupid_ ,” Bruce snarled as he ripped off another scrap of wallpaper. “You _stupid_ motherfucking _idiot_.”

 

It must be the case he was working on. The human trafficking ring. Something else must have happened after Clark pulled him out of the burning batmobile. Maybe ‘the accountant’ had struck again. Or maybe his failure to capture him last night had led to something disastrous happening today.

 

Maybe, despite what Bruce had said, this really was a situation that needed the Justice League. Or, at the very least, someone else to help even the score.

 

Clark let that thought pull him out of the sky. He slipped through one of the many holes in the ruined roof, floated through the twisting hallways, and settled silently onto the floor behind the other man.

 

“Do you need help?”

 

Bruce stiffened, then looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

 

Clark blinked. He’d been dropping in on Bruce for months now. This was the first time Bruce had questioned his presence. “What?"

 

"Shouldn't you be in Metropolis?"

 

"Met-? No. I'm here. I'm asking if you need help."

 

“It’s wallpaper. A little below your paygrade, Superman.”

 

“That wasn’t what I was—”

 

“And I have workers coming tomorrow. They’ll strip this whole building before the roofers come.”

 

“Then why are y—?”

 

“I can’t deal with this," Bruce snarled. "I’m tired. I’m hungover.”

 

“That doesn’t explain—”

 

“Please just…” he turned his face away. “...get out. I want to be alone.”

 

Clark opened his mouth to protest. Something in Bruce’s voice stopped him. A rawness. An honesty. A pain. And maybe a touch of… embarrassment? Was Bruce embarrassed that Clark had seen him like this? His expensive shirt smattered with dirt from the derelict mansion, hair falling tangled across his brow, polished shoes all but ruined by mud.

 

Clark bowed his head, ashamed at himself for so blindly and stupidly dropping into what, in hindsight, was obviously a private moment. This wasn't Bruce dressed as Batman facing off against a group of armed thugs. This wasn't even Bruce lounging around during some charity function, a wide fake smile on his face as he sipped champagne. This was Bruce unguarded and unmasked. “I’m sorry," Clark said. "I didn't mean..."

 

Bruce’s good hand clenched into a fist. “I told you not to apologise to me.”

 

“I just…”

 

“Go!”

 

Clark did. He left feeling like a bumbling oaf who had stumbled into the wrong changing room and seen something he wasn’t supposed to see.

 

He kept flying, looped a slow circle around the planet, and tried not to listen or look at Wayne Manor or the man inside it. But, despite himself, he couldn't stop listening to the man's breathing. Harsh and oddly shallow. A constant thrum in the back of his mind. Something was wrong. Maybe it wasn't a big deal. Maybe it was something small. Or maybe it was something big. He had no way of knowing, let alone knowing if it was something he could help with. But the knowledge of Bruce's distress stayed with him, as hard to ignore as a spider slowly crawling up the back of his neck.

 

It took hours, but finally he gave in and circled back towards Gotham. He didn’t go back to Bruce. The man had asked him to leave him alone and Clark decided it was best to respect those wishes.

 

But he did fly to Batman’s base. The place he and Bruce had sat beside each other, shoulder to shoulder, and gotten drunk not twenty four hours before.

 

If something had gone wrong in the case evidence of what that something was would be there. Crime was not something Superman helped with very often – most of his work revolved around emergency situations and humanitarian relief – but if 'the accountant' had struck again then people could be in danger. Whether Bruce wanted his help or not, that was something Clark couldn't ignore.

 

He dove towards the isolated building, wriggled around the sheet of plastic that had been used to close the hole in the wall, and dropped down to stand in Batman's base by the computer. It was a large intimidating thing, every piece of it ultramodern and big enough that it had to have been assembled in the room. Or the room built around it.

 

He tapped a button on the keyboard.

 

One of the screens flashed to life and displayed a single word illuminated in bold capital letters. Password.

 

He should have expected that. Bruce wasn’t the sort of man not to put a password on his computer, let alone a computer that held the secrets to Batman. And that password was probably a string of random symbols and digits. Not something anyone could guess.

 

Clark turned away.

 

What was he doing? After weeks of invading Bruce’s privacy did he really think he was entitled to this? Bruce had told him to leave him alone. Was he really—

 

“About time you showed up.”

 

Clark looked up and locked eyes with Alfred. If the man was surprised to find Superman trying to hack into Batman’s computer he didn’t show it.

 

“Alfred,” Clark said, trying to hide his own shock. It wasn't often someone managed to sneak up on him. “What happened tonight? Did Bruce go out again? Did he find anything?”

 

The butler regarded him, expression unreadable. “No. I have hidden his batsuit. Hopefully he'll stay out of it long enough for his arm to heal.”

 

Clark stared at him. That wasn’t what Bruce was so upset about… was it? “He’s at the old mansion.”

 

“He tends to go there when he’s had a bad day.”

 

“I know but…”

 

Alfred leant forward and with a quick flourish typed a string of letters on the computer keyboard. The password was accepted and the monitors all snapped into life like an army ready for duty. Without a word Alfred picked up an empty coffee mug abandoned by the computer and left the room.

 

For a while Clark didn’t move. Had Alfred just...?

 

He turned to look at the computer. There was one thing running; a scan that was continuously searching for all online sources on the subject of Superman.

 

Clark sat at the computer and scrolled through the findings. Every photo that was ever published of him since his return, every report of his activities around the world, all of it time-lined and logged in meticulous detail.

 

He shouldn't be surprised or even offended. After all, Bruce's spying was far less invasive than Clark's and he'd even told him he was aware of at least some of his habits post-resurrection. 

 

_The time you spent there following the Justice League meeting was one of the longest periods between Superman sightings since you returned from the dead._

 

Still, it was disconcerting to realise the man had been watching him so intently for such a long period of time.

 

He scrolled down the page, seeing all the photos that had been taken of him helping refugees, stopping accidents, and rescuing people from disaster zones…

_I’m not as good as you think I am._

_I doubt that._

 

…as well as other photos of him flying over cities, hovering near satellites, and even maps that tracked these sightings to show where he had been… and where he hadn’t been.

 

_I know you’re not in Metropolis._

 

He scrolled down further until he reached the most recent photos and his stomach flipped.

 

Him hovering outside Lois’ window. Her leaning out to wipe the hair of his brow. Them both kissing through her window.

 

The headline: Who is Superman’s Red Headed Lover?


	18. Revelations

Clark stayed sitting by that computer, watching as the number of online sources featuring the picture of him and Lois kissing quickly turned from single digits, to double digits, to triple digits, and then more. Lois was identified within the hour and a collection of overzealous fans combed through her Facebook until they found an old photo of her sitting with boyfriend Clark Kent at the Daily Planet Christmas party. The conclusion they drew was obvious and for a few sickening minutes he watched the theory take the internet by storm.

 

Superman is deceased Daily Planet Reporter Clark Kent.

 

But then, almost instantly, the tide turned. Several sources posted about how ‘ridiculous’ the idea of Superman being a low-level reporter was and people turned to far more ‘plausible’ explanation that Lois herself was in fact another alien.

 

Or maybe a spy who had been sent to America to convert the ‘all American’ hero to Russia’s interests.

 

Or maybe a killer cyborg built by Lex Luthor.

 

Within twenty minutes the theory that Clark Kent was Superman was buried, as forgettable as all wild conspiracy theories. In the wake of it Clark was left with nothing but that photo – Lois and him kissing out of a fourth story window – and the nagging knowledge that this was what Bruce had been looking at before he started ripping wallpaper off the wall in his ruined mansion.

 

He stayed there, sitting in Bruce’s seat, looking at that picture long enough to come up with several theories… and several conclusions. Each one more damning than the last.

 

An hour before sunrise Bruce stormed in, eyes black and not the least bit surprised to see him. Without skipping a beat he pulled the cord out of the back of the computer. The screen went dark with a flash of blue light.

 

“You have no right,” he said.

 

“Was it me or was it her?” Clark asked.

 

Bruce turned to look at him. He didn’t say anything.

 

Clark leant forward. “Was it me? Are you jealous of me kissing her?” A pause. “Or are you jealous of her kissing me?”

 

“Get out.”

 

“You bought her new apartment didn’t you,” Clark said, ignoring the order. “It’s what you do, isn’t it. You buy people property because it’s easy and it means people will like you without you having to figure them out, or talk to them. Just like you did with my mother, just like you tried to do with me.”

 

“You’re so sure you’ve figured me out.”

 

“I’ve seen her apartment,” Clark pushed. “It’s big, expensive, not something she could afford on a reporter’s salary especially with all the time she took off.”

 

“Yes,” Bruce snapped. “I bought her the apartment.”

 

That confession was like a punch to the gut. “So,” Clark said, trying and failing to hold his voice steady. “It’s me you’re jealous of. You want to kiss her. You’re her new boyfriend.”

 

Bruce was stiff, angry. “Is that what she told you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then maybe you should have this conversation with her. You two have obviously made up.”

 

Low. “It’s not her I need to hear this from. It’s you.”

 

“Why?" Bruce snarled. "Do you want me to admit that I’m the second choice? I know that, Clark. I’ve always known that.”

 

“I need to hear this from you because you’re the one that I’ve spent all my time thinking about since I came back from the dead,” he snapped. “It hurt too much to even _think_ about her so all my attention went to you. You’re the one I’ve talked to. You’re the one I’ve saved. But you never told me you were dating her. Why? Are you afraid I’ll attack you? Are you afraid you’ll lose her? Or are you afraid I’ll tell her you fuck every supermodel who looks at you sideways?”

 

“Who do you think taught me who you were?” Bruce said. “Or did you really think I stopped hating you because our mothers share the same name?”

 

“I don’t—”

 

“No,” Bruce snarled. “You don’t know. When you were gone she was who told me about you. She was the one that really truly changed my mind.”

 

“If you think she’s so special then why do you cheat on her?”

 

“I haven’t d—”

 

“She’s the love of my life, Bruce. You could have told me. You could at least show her the resp—”

 

“I fucked her one time!” Bruce yelled. “Is that what you want to hear? I fucked her once, while you were dead, and it was the worst fuck of my entire life because we were only fucking each other because we couldn’t fuck you!”

 

Clark blinked. “What?”

 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bruce snarled. “She never was. And I’m not her boyfriend.”

 

“Who’s her boyfriend then?”

 

“She doesn’t have one.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“Because, unlike you, I actually _talk_ to her,” Bruce said. “She loves you, Clark, she always loved you. I should have known it was only a matter of time before she realised life with you was better than—”

 

“No. We’re not together.”

 

Bruce was unimpressed. “I have eyes, Kent. I know what a kiss like that means.”

 

“No. You don’t. She kissed me goodbye.”

 

Now it was Bruce’s turn to blink. “Why?”

 

“Because that’s why I went to talk to her this morning. To say goodbye.”

 

Again. “Why?”

 

“Because I realised I hadn’t done that… and I needed to.”

 

The room lapsed into silence. In that silence Clark felt the anger between them start to strain and drain away. The energy that had fuelled it expended on both sides.

 

“Is that why you were angry?” Clark asked. “Because you thought I was back with Lois?”

 

Bruce’s lips thinned and he ducked his head down.

 

"Bruce?"

 

“Last night I… I told you things, or at least, parts of things, I haven’t told anyone before. I thought that meant something. But it didn’t. I was angry, angry at myself, for thinking what I thought, even if it was only for a little while.”

 

“Was it Lois then?”

 

Bruce didn’t look up.

 

“Were you jealous of Lois?” Clark specified. “In the photo? For kissing me?”

 

He knew Bruce was bisexual. That wasn’t a surprise. He’d witnessed it when he’d accidentally seen Bruce naked and in bed with a male model during one of his bouts of sexual activity. That Bruce’s sexuality might extend to him wasn’t what made his voice shake slightly on the last word either. It was what Bruce had already admitted to. Sharing secrets, _I thought it meant something_ … that wasn’t sexuality he Bruce was talking about. That was something else.

 

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Bruce said softly. “Get out.”

 

This time, Clark obeyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now my most subscribed to story on the site. Huzzah!


	19. A Letter Left on the Batcomputer

_Dear B,_

_You said you told me things you had never told anyone else. You said you thought that meant something, and I think it does. It took a long time for me to trust you, Bruce, but I think I do trust you now. And so, here is something I have never told anyone._

_It’s the story of how I learnt I was bulletproof._

_There was an old man who used to own property on the edge of town. We all used to call him Old Farmer Rod. My Pa told me he was a war veteran, though I never learnt what war he fought in. All the kids were scared of him and told stories about how he always carried his gun and killed dogs that ran onto his land, even if they weren’t harassing his livestock._

_There was a game the older kids used to play. They would sneak onto his property, climb the grain silo, and jump off into a pile of hay. Everyone swore they had done it so my friends (Pete and Lana) and I decided to try it one day. We crept onto his property, climbed the silo, and jumped off._

_I’m not sure what happened then. I think I might have flown, but only for a second._

_When I fell and crawled out of the hay pile he was there. I had never seen him up close before. I remember the way he looked at me, like he hated me. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before. Lana and Pete were already running away. I tried to follow them._

_But then he shot me._

_It was a shotgun. I didn’t know that then. Pa only had one gun in the house, a rifle, and he kept it locked in his safe and only took it out in emergencies like when he had to put down an animal that was dying._

_I just remember it hit me in more places than one. I fell. He shot me again, reloaded, and shot twice more. I could have run away of course, but I didn’t know that. I thought I was shot. I thought I was dead. But I didn’t know why I wasn’t dying._

_He kept yelling ‘what are you’. I didn’t say anything back. I just screamed and curled up on the ground and tried to stop the blood, even though I couldn’t see any, I kept thinking it must be there._

_I have always wondered if Old Farmer Rod saw me fly and that’s why he shot me. Or if he would have shot anyone trespassing on his property and I was just the person that happened to catch the bullet._

_I got up and ran away when he reloaded a second time and hid in an abandoned barn until sundown._

_When Lana and Pete got back to town they told their parents what happened – that Rod fired a gun, that they ran, and they thought I was behind them – and the police went around to Old Farmer Rod’s place. The police didn’t find me though Rod told them that I had been there and that I wasn’t human. I only found this out later when I went home and Pa told me what everyone was saying. He was angry. He said I shouldn’t do things which might reveal my powers, even if everyone thought Rod was crazy. Pa made me lie to the police, made me tell them that I never went to Old Farmer Rod’s place._

_Pete and Lana got in trouble for lying and my Ma and Pa never learnt what really happened. I destroyed the shirt I had been wearing. It had bullet holes and burns in it, I didn’t want them to see. I’m still not sure why. I think, maybe, I thought if they knew how different I was they wouldn’t be on my side anymore. That was stupid but I haven’t always been as smart or as perceptive as I should be, especially when it comes to people._

_I think maybe that is something we have in common._

_Maybe that was why we fought. Maybe we were objects on a collision course, our different positions like magnetized energy sucking us closer together. Maybe Lex was just the catalyst of something that was, ultimately, inevitable. Or maybe it really was just the blind stumbling into the blind._

_I don’t know if I can ever really forgive you or forget what happened between us. But, you are wrong if you think the time we’ve spent together since my resurrection means nothing. You are the only person I know who I can really be myself around, especially right now. You were right, I am grieving. And you were wrong, I do have some things to apologise for. I think I have more I need to apologise for than ever before._

_I hope you will give me the opportunity to do that._

_Regards,_

_C_


	20. Her Secret

It had been days since he’d fought with Bruce, days since he’d broken their unspoken rules and looked into the man’s computer, days since he’d accused Bruce of stealing his girlfriend and inadvertently destroyed what he was starting to suspect might be one of the most important relationships he’d ever had. And when exactly had that happened? When had his arch enemy, a man who he had once thought belonged on the inside of a prison cell, become his only real friend?

 

A friend so important to him he’d felt compelled to leave the first physical letter he’d written in years on the keyboard of his computer.

 

If Bruce had forgiven him, he had no way of knowing. He assumed Bruce would call him back in some way. Perhaps call his mother, perhaps organise another meeting. But he didn’t. So, instead of intruding again, Clark did something he hadn’t done in a long time. He stole some oversized clothes off a washing line, put on the pair of glasses she had given him, and sat at the old bus shelter near the Mr Mac’s grocery shop in downtown Metropolis.

 

It was strange being Clark again. People walking down the street ignored him, more concerned with the low rumble of thunder and the first smattering of rain than the unassuming man strange man sitting on a bench. The only person who noticed him was Lois. She walked out of the shop with all her shopping bundled into plastic bags, saw him, and paused for only a moment before approaching.

 

She sat beside him, dumping the food on the ground at her feet. “I don’t see you for months and now twice in one week. What have I done to deserve this?”

 

“It’s been a hell of a week,” Clark told her.

 

“I bet.”

 

“The media still following you around?”

 

“I gave them the slip. Amateurs.”

 

“Only compared to you. You once made a man confess to fraud to leave you alone.”

 

“I’m a reporter, Clark. It’s what I do.” Her smile slipped. “Or, at least, it’s what I did.”

 

“You’ll get some good stories again. The Lois I know would never give up being a reporter.”

 

“I’m not so sure I’m the Lois you know anymore.”

 

He didn’t say anything.

 

She sighed and rubbed her brow. “I’m sorry. That… that’s not what you want to hear.”

 

“Lo?”

 

“Yes?”

 

He thought about what he wanted to ask her, all the things he wanted to ask her, about Bruce, about the time he was gone, about what it had all meant or didn’t mean. He settled with one question.

 

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

 

She smiled though there was no mirth in it. “What gave it away? The fact I’m carrying all my own food?”

 

He didn’t laugh. “Why did you let me believe you did?”

 

“It was just… easier,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want…” she trailed off and Clark saw her eyes dance down to look at the engagement ring still on her finger. They stayed silent for a long time, looking at that ring. Outside the shelter the rain turned slowly from drizzle to downpour. Only when it was thundering down did Lois speak. “You killed yourself for me, Clark. You looked me right in the eye, told me I was your world, and killed yourself. I… I can’t do that again. I can’t stand on the sidelines and watch you fight and die. I can’t lie awake at night wondering if you’re coming home or not. I love you. I will always love you. I know you probably don’t believe that right now but…”

 

“I do. I do believe it.”

 

Lois turned to him and smiled. “It’s so good to see you in glasses again.”

 

“It’s good to be in glasses again,” he confessed.

 

“Do you have a new identity?”

 

“No.”

 

She looked so earnestly disappointed that Clark couldn’t help but add “…but I think I’ll make one soon.”

 

“I’m happy for you. Any ideas what your new life is going to be like?”

 

“Not really.” Then, before he could even consider what he was saying. “I think I might move to Gotham.”

 

Lois smiled. There was something in that smile. Not happy. Not sad. Not anything he could name but shining through her eyes as obvious as day. “I thought you might.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't originally planned but I was a little worried people didn't really sympathise with Lois or understand where she was coming from. Hopefully this clears that up and shows a light towards a future where Clark and Lois can be friends.


	21. Together Apart

The bat-signal was up. It had been up for a long time, illumining the dense cloud cover with Batman’s blocky insignia, large enough and imposing enough to be eye catching even from space. It was also coming not from the GCPD headquarters like usual but a fenced off portion of land in an old industrial district.

 

Clark knew what that meant.

 

This bat-signal wasn’t for Bruce. It was for him. Just like the signal Bruce had lit when he challenged him to a pitched battle in a back street of Gotham. Just like that night Bruce was waiting for him by the signal, alone and in a slightly different suit of armour. Not as bulky as the one he’d worn when he fought Clark the first time but not his usual simple grey either.

 

Clark dropped carefully out of the sky, reminding himself that he and Bruce were friends now… sort of. He wasn’t going to end up lying in another warehouse, lungs burning, with a kryptonite spear pressed against his cheek… he hoped. The fight they’d had wasn’t that bad… right?

 

He landed softly on the muddy ground, careful not to stand too close.

 

Bruce watched him, face impassive behind the mask and cape snapping back and forth in a fickle wind.

 

For a moment neither of them said or did anything. Then…

 

“You’re not going to attack me are you?” Clark asked.

 

“No,” Bruce answered.

 

“Thank God,” he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Look, Bruce, I don’t know if you got my letter but I want to ap—”

 

“I need your help,” Bruce interrupted him. “I have no other way to contact you.”

 

“Oh. I’m sorry. I will…” Clark paused for a moment as he realised what he’d heard. “You need my help?”

 

“Yes. It’s the human trafficking ring. I’ve found them.”

 

Ten minutes later they were at the dock, crouched in the shadows, and watching a group of men with guns unload some ragged people from a shipping container.

 

Clark had never seen human trafficking before. Not really. Crime was, by its very nature quiet and that meant it was usually under his radar.

 

It wasn’t like it was in the movies.

 

In the movies human trafficking victims were always beautiful women being smuggled in or out of the country in brightly coloured underwear. What he was seeing now was different. It was men, women, and children, starving and desperate, being moved into Gotham to work in one of the city’s many underground businesses. Indentured by their ‘travel expenses’ and forced to do jobs no one should ever do.

 

“That one,” Bruce nodded towards a skinny man in a dark green suit and glasses arguing with one of the dock workers. “He’s the accountant.”

 

Incredulously. “He’s the man that set you on fire?”

 

“Not exactly. That would be his new body guard. That one.”

 

Another man. This one in a grey suit which was big enough to look like he was hiding a second underneath it. There were burns on his face and his hands were covered in thick black gloves.

 

“Who are these people?”

 

“Depends on who you ask,” Bruce said.

 

“I’m asking you.”

 

“Their names are Edward Nygma and Ted Carson. Nygma I have met before. He’s smart but his presence here tonight tells me he doesn’t trust the people he’s working with and isn’t immune to manipulation. Carson is new… but his gimmick is not. I took down the last Firefly. I can take down this one.”

 

“What do you want me to do?”

 

“The people. I need you to get them out of danger while I fight Carson and stop Nygma. There are the ones you see here but I believe there are others as well, likely in some of the other containers and in a large truck parked around the front. You’ll need to locate them and move quickly. The men may start killing them when they realise I’m in the area.”

 

“Killing them?”

 

“Yes. It’s easy to get rid of a body or twenty in Gotham. Not so easy to get rid of a dozen witness statements.”

 

“Jesus.”

 

“It might be hard,” Bruce said. “Some of these families believe they are coming into America for a better life. They may fight you.”

 

Clark thought of all the refugees he’d met over the last couple of months, he thought of how desperate some of them were, and how hopeless their situation felt. He thought of parents hugging children with tiny arms and bloated stomachs, he thought of men working impossible hours for can of food, he thought of people who had been forced to choose which loved ones to take with them and which to leave behind. He didn’t believe for a second there would be anything someone in that situation wouldn’t do to give their family a chance at a better life.

 

But this wasn’t that. These people were importing slave labour, people who would work illegal jobs to pay off an imagined and ever growing debt.

 

There had to be a way forward, a way to end the refugee crisis and help these people, but this was not it.

 

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

 

“Good. This won’t take long.” Bruce began to move.

 

Clark grabbed his arm before he could leave. “You’re sure you’re okay to fight this… Firefly? He burnt you last time.”

 

“I’m ready for him this time. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Clark didn’t let go of Bruce’s arm.

 

Bruce waited.

 

“You’re not going to kill or brand anyone are you?” He finally asked.

 

“No. I’m doing this the old way.”

 

“The old way?”

  
“The way I did things with Robin.”

 

“Who’s R—?”

 

Bruce jumped, fired his grapple gun, and zipped up onto the crane structure overhead. Before Clark could even think Bruce dropped, grabbed Carson by the back of his collar, and hauled him up and away from the refugees.

 

It was almost perfect. Almost.

 

Just before Carson was clear he gave a shout and tried to activate a flame thrower which had somehow been hidden in the sleeve of his suit. He ended up setting himself on fire, not Bruce, but the noise caused Nygma to spin around. The man snarled when he saw the flurry of black pronged wings and barked an order at the stunned dockworker behind him.

 

“Do it! Now!”

 

Clark jumped down into the fray, shoved the people that had been outside of the shipping container back in, and grabbed the whole thing, lifting it out of the scene as quickly as he could without the G-forces hurting the people inside.

 

Even so, he could hear a few screams and crashes as he lifted it up, flew the dockyard, and settled it gently down onto an old rundown boulevard littered with a few seedy looking bars and a single shocked parking inspector who stared at him with wide eyes.

 

“Make sure they’re okay,” Clark told her before taking off again to find the others.

 

It had been seconds but already the fight in the dockyards was heating up. Literally.

 

Clark saw fire, men with guns shooting wildly into the air, and Nygma hunched small and red faced to the side.

 

But that was Bruce’s job.

 

Clark scanned the dockyard. There were several pockets of people, all in various stages of coming and going, and each guarded by a small contingent of armed men. The ones in the most immediate danger were another group which had just emerged from a shipping container.

 

The men guarding them could hear the fight and were getting jumpy. Their fingers already on triggers and eyes wild.

 

“What the fuck is going on?!”

 

“It’s Batman! I told you he’d find us! I told you!”

 

“Fuck! Just shut up!”

 

“He’s going to kill us! He’s going to…”

 

Clark landed beside them, took their guns out of their hands before they could blink, and mashed them together in his hands.

 

“S-Super—!”

 

“Bat’s bought Superman!”

 

“Run! Get out of here!”

 

Clark ignored them and lifted the second shipping container up and out. When he dropped it beside the first on the boulevard the parking inspector had been joined by a number of people. That number had grown in the thirty seconds it took for him to retrieve the third batch of refugees, and then the fourth. Everyone staring in wonder and rushing forward to help the confused frightened people Clark was carrying in containers, trucks, or just in his arms, out of danger.

 

Bruce was right. Some people tried to fight him, some ran from him, and some he even let get away as long as they weren’t running into danger. But, his humanitarian work seemed to give him a good reputation and most seemed far more willing to trust him than their gun wielding ‘protectors’.

 

When he was sure they were all out he flew back to where he’d last seen Bruce.

 

It was almost unrecognisable.

 

The gunmen were scattered about, hanging from cables or sprawled unconscious on the ground. Nygma had been cuffed to a shipping container and was ranting about inevitability, probability, and… “you’re a _cheater,_ Batman. Not smart enough to find me on your own, you needed an alien to help you! Probably your robot man too! And your god lady!” Bruce ignored him, busy cuffing Carson who had been stripped of his flamethrower and was cursing up at Batman through a mouthful of freshly broken teeth.

 

Bruce looked up at Clark as he approached. “Did you get all the victims out?”

 

“Yes. They’re out. They…” Clark trailed off as something strange happened.

 

Bruce smiled. Not a half smirk, not a playboy’s loose grin, but a wide vicious _victorious_ smile that pressed at the corners of his cowl and somehow made his eyes shine through the shadow of his mask. Clark had never seen a smile like that on Bruce’s face and he had to pause and peek through the cowl just to make sure he was still seeing the same man.

 

“We did it.”

 

“Yeah,” Clark agreed, his own voice traitorously breathless. “Yeah we did.”


	22. Sharing Space

“Wine?”

 

“No.”

 

“Something stronger?”

 

“No. Nothing tonight.”

 

Bruce tipped his head to the side. “You sure? It’s what we do. And it would be nice to drink when things are going right for a change.”

 

“I know but… not tonight.”

 

Bruce accepted that, put the bottle he had pulled out of the cupboard aside, and began tugging at the fastenings on his cape. He’d already pushed back his cowl and shed the outer fireproofed layer of his armour leaving his usual form fitting grey. It blended with the dark colours of Batman’s bunker-like base and the imposing shape of his vehicles lined up ready for deployment.

 

Clark should have felt out of place as he moved slowly through it – looking at the equipment and cars in closer detail, seeing the various different batsuits, and counting the kilograms loaded onto the barbell in the back – but he didn’t. Somehow, in the time since he first stepped into the other man’s apartment, he’d grown used to being in Bruce’s space.

 

“You’re running out of room,” Clark noted as he hovered for a moment to move over a cluster of cables and equipment. “Your jet barely fits in here.”

 

“I know. That’s why I’m refurbishing the manor.”

 

“That’s going to be your new base?”

 

“There is a large system of caves beneath it. It shouldn’t be too tricky to modify it to suit my needs.”

 

Clark laughed and then stopped when he realised the man wasn’t joking. “Wait. Really? You’re moving into an actual cave?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re Batman. You’re literally going to live in a bat cave.”

 

“No. I’m going to live in the mansion on top of the bat cave.”

 

“That’s a big house. I thought you were going to turn it into a Justice League base.”

 

“It is a big house. But my plans for the Justice League were bigger.”

 

“Such as?”

 

Bruce leant against the wall, watching him. “You destroyed a Wayne Enterprises satellite during your battle with General Zod. My company has written it off, too expensive to repair, too hard to salvage. I was hoping to repurpose that.”

 

“Into what?”

 

“A headquarters. It is big enough and has life support capabilities… once repaired.”

 

“You wanted the Justice League headquarters to be in space,” Clark said, just to make sure he understood what Bruce was telling him.

 

“Considering that’s where both Zod and Steppenwolf came from I didn’t think it a bad idea.” Bruce’s voice softened. “But it’s not going to happen. The Justice League isn’t going to happen.”

 

“You don’t know that. You’ve won me over, haven’t you?”

 

“Have I?” Bruce studied him. “That’s good to know.”

 

Clark ignored him and continued his slow self-tour around the base, pausing only once more to look at a suit set away from the others. It wasn’t a batsuit. It wasn’t even big enough to fit Bruce. But, Clark didn’t need to ask to know that had never been the intension. The spray paint, the blood, and the R emblem emblazed on it were all Clark needed to see.

 

_...the way I did things with Robin…_

 

Bruce was watching him, a familiar darkness in his eyes.

 

Clark moved silently on.

 

When he completed his lap of the room he moved to stand before Bruce. “Thank you,” he said.

 

“For what?” Bruce asked.

 

“For letting me help.”

 

“I needed the help.”

 

“Still, thank you. I know I over stepped some boundaries last time I was here. I think I…” _got so used to you being guilty one I started to forget I could wrong you._ “…over stepped. I looked at your computer without permission and said some things I shouldn’t. Lois and I might be finished but she’s still… I still care about her a lot and when I thought you were with her I...”

 

“I understand.”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Yes.” A pause. “It’s not the worst fight we’ve ever had,” Bruce said dryly.

 

Clark barked out a horse laugh. “No. I suppose it isn’t.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything and Clark supposed that was a good place to leave things. They seemed to be the closest to ‘okay’ they had ever been. He stepped away from him, moving for the still unrepaired hole in the wall that he’d made the week before.

 

“Clark?”

 

He paused.

 

“What happened to Old Farmer Rod?”

 

“He died a couple of years ago. Because he had no will or apparent heirs the solicitor liquefied everything, subdivided his land and sold it on the open market. Pete actually ended up buying a lot of it. He’s married to Lana now and I think they’re building a new homestead on the property. Funny how these things go, isn’t it?”

 

Bruce hummed in agreement.

 

Clark took another step to leave.

 

“Clark,” Bruce stopped him again. “I know what it’s like to be a kid and come face to face with a gun.”

 

Clark turned.

 

Bruce was looking at him, strangely resigned. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

 

“I’m not,” Clark said. “It was horrible but it meant when I next saw someone pull a gun on someone else I didn’t hesitate to get in the way. Like tonight.”

 

“Yes.” Bruce sighed. “You have no idea how much I needed tonight, Clark.” His eyes drifted closed for a moment. “It feels like a very long time since my last win.”

 

Clark studied him; the sweat slicked hair, the close cut armour, the smear of soot on the side of his chin… and that smile. The same smile he’d seen on the battlefield, dialled back to a small flickering just at the edge of his lips.

 

He wasn’t beautiful. At least, not in the way Clark was used to thinking about beauty. Not in the way Lois was beautiful. Red hair, soft skin, and small petite features. Bruce, in contrast, was large, dark, and hard. The very opposite of everything Clark had ever thought he'd been attracted to. But that didn’t stop him from being strangely fascinating.

 

“Bruce?”

 

The man’s eyes opened. “Hm?”

 

Clark opened his mouth, hesitated, and then did something he didn’t think he would ever do. He walked forward, put a hand against the wall behind Bruce’s shoulder, and leant forward just enough to narrow the gap between them, just enough to deliberately and purposefully put himself in the other man’s personal space.

 

The smile on Bruce’s lips slipped and a different look past behind his eyes. For a few fleeting seconds they stayed as they were, breath shared and bodies unambiguously close. Bruce’s heartrate had picked up, his breathing become slightly more ragged, but he didn’t move away.

 

Clark leant in closer, titled his head slightly.

 

“Clark…” There was a warning in his voice, but not a denial. Bruce wasn’t telling Clark to back off, just... “This isn’t something that can mean nothing for me,” he said. “Not with you.”

 

“Me neither,” Clark promised and kissed him.


	23. Firsts

When he’d first kissed Lois it had been too soon. The world was ending around them, he had been about to face General Zod, and a part of him had thought if he hadn’t kissed her then he wouldn’t be around to try again later. But, after everything was over, the city and General Zod both destroyed, that kiss became an obligation.

 

A commitment not too each other but to move on and be happy together despite what they had witnesses and despite what little they actually knew about each other. The first few dates had been awkward and for a few fleeting days he wondered if Lois’ prediction – it’s all downhill after the first kiss – might be true.

 

But then, slowly, they’d caught up to that kiss and from that point on their relationship had unfurled.

 

Bruce was the opposite.

 

This kiss wasn’t early, it was late.

 

They already knew each other, had potential and promises between them, and history, both good and bad.

 

From the moment their lips met and Clark felt Bruce move against him, hard, hungry, and bigger and more powerful by far than anyone he had ever kissed before, he knew they were making up for lost time.

 

At first it was lips, moving in tandem. Then it was tongues, a firm deliberate slide. And then it was teeth, just a hint, just Bruce testing the strength of his skin, as if he had to confirm that it really was Superman he was kissing and not an imposter.

 

And then, finally it was hands, and that was where Clark lost track of what was happening a little bit and gave himself over to the feel of the other man, the size of him, the shape of the body underneath his armour. There wasn’t an inch of flesh on him that wasn’t rock hard muscle, or rough stubble, or chapped lips...

 

“Clark.”

 

Clark stopped and opened his eyes. “What?” He panted, a little more breathlessly than he’d planned on.

 

Bruce swallowed. “If we’re just kissing, we need to stop now.”

 

“Why?”

 

A flicker of embarrassment. “I’m getting hard. If we keep kissing I’m going to need to c—”

 

Clark reconnected their lips.

 

And, the truth was, that was more than a little bit terrifying. The closest he’d ever come to having sex with a man was mutual masturbation with Pete when they were fourteen and even then he was pretty sure Pete had been more interested in the heterosexual porn they were watching than him. Ever since then he’d never felt close enough to a man to be sexually attracted to them. Men were typically slower to open up and Clark knew he required that connection before he could start to truly desire someone.

 

The result of that was he was inexperienced… and Bruce wasn’t. Clark knew Bruce had had sex with men before, probably a lot of sex, and was almost certainly as confident with a male body as he was with a female.

 

He also knew that Bruce wouldn’t think less of him if he wanted to back out or take things slow.

 

But, in the heat of the moment, the rationality of taking a step back was lost. He hadn’t touched someone like this in what felt like years and the heat, the hunger, the electric energy of life…

 

He didn’t even realise Bruce was walking him backwards until his legs bumped against the chair by the computer and Bruce was gently but firmly pushing him down into it. And how that hell had that happened? He was the one that kissed Bruce. He was the one that was meant to be in control of this situation. But now he was sitting down and blinking up at Bruce who was taking a moment to regard him with unabashed appreciation.

 

Just when Clark was starting to feel like he should say or do something Bruce sunk to his hunches in front of the chair and… oh.

 

“Is this okay?”

 

Clark nodded.

 

Bruce’s eyes were hard. “I’m going to need a verbal, Kent.”

 

“Yes,” he croaked. “Yes. This is… this is great.”

 

A flicker of a smile crossed Bruce’s face before he reached down, hooked his fingers in the join on Clark’s costume and pulled it down over his hips.

 

Clark’s cock sprung free, already half hard and embarrassingly wet.

 

Bruce took hold of him in his still gloved hand, and leant forward to run his tongue painfully low along the seam between torso and thigh.

 

Clark shuddered and watched, fascinated, as Bruce repeated the action, nipped at his hipbone, and then kissed his way slowly back down between his legs, all the while holding Clark’s cock firmly and out of the way. By the time Bruce’s lips found Clark’s balls Clark was gripping the armrest of the chair hard enough it crumbled in his hand.

 

“Ah… fuh… sorr…”

 

Bruce pulled off suddenly. “Didn’t I tell you not to apologise to me?”

 

Clark closed his eyes and leant back against the headrest. “Didn’t I tell you that was a bullshit rule?”

 

“Not in so few words.”

 

“Well, I am now. It’s a bullshit rule.”

 

Bruce laughed, the sound low and tempting, then without warning he wrapped his lips around the spongey head of Clark’s cock.  

 

Clark choked out a cry and opened his eyes to stare as Bruce leant forward to swallow him whole, one hand still clamped tight around Clark’s base and head moving in a hungry practised rhythm. The sudden stimulation had him all the way to hard and panting within a minute. By the second minute he’d destroyed the other armrest and by the third Bruce had released his hold on Clark’s base and was sinking down on his cock further than anyone had ever gone before.

 

“Bruce I’m gonna…”

 

That was all the warning he had time to give.

 

It was enough. But instead of pulling off Bruce sucked him harder, opening his throat and swallowing around him.

 

_“Fu—!”_

 

He came, and Bruce caught it all, every last drop in his mouth. He didn’t swallow though, he let it run over his lips and chin in streams of semen and spit. It was the most disgustingly erotic thing Clark had ever seen.

 

Bruce looked up, pupils blown wide and cheeks red, a new dark and urgent intent etched across every line on his face. The man stood, put one knee on the seat beside Clark, and leant forward to crush their lips together. Clark could taste himself in that kiss, salty and strong. It wasn’t a taste he was used to but he allowed himself to experience it alongside the strong earthy smell of the other man and the rasp of stubble against his own.

 

As they kissed Bruce fumbled with the front of his armour. He cursed and Clark reached forward to hook his fingers around the cup and rip it from the strange grey fabric.

 

“Shit.” He hadn’t meant to destroy Bruce’s armour. But, if the man was angry, he didn’t show it. He grabbed his own cock and started working himself, hard and fast. Clark let his hand join Bruce’s and pressed their lips back together as he felt the hot hard silk of the other man sliding rough and fast through his fist.

 

It was dry and had to be painful. But, maybe that was what Bruce wanted because before he knew it the man was groaning into their kiss and there was a warm splash across Clark’s exposed thigh.

 

And - oh God - Bruce was coming. Coming for him. He'd made Bruce come.

 

The full weight of the other man, batsuit and all, collapsed against him a moment later. Clark gathered the sprawling man awkwardly into his arms with a low laugh.

 

“Needed that did you?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

Clark just laughed harder, thrilled to hear the exhausted satisfied tenor in the other man’s voice and to have broken down Bruce’s guilt enough for the man to put aside his careful façade and be a little bit abrasive.

 

“Hey Bruce?"

 

A low growl.

 

"I don't not like you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today was the hottest day in Sydney for the last 5 years on record. 43C where I was (that 110F for those of you in the US). While I love the heat and thus actually was really enjoying myself I hope you all appreciate the fact that I spent this super hot day in a dark muggy room writing porn... which didn't make it any cooler.


	24. Making Deals

That wasn’t the end of their evening.

 

After spending a few minutes tangled together on the ruined chair Bruce stood, cracked a few of his joints, and then led Clark to a stark shower in the very back of the base. There Clark stood and watched as Bruce slowly took off his armour, first the gloves, then the belt, and finally the rest, peeled off and tossed aside as if it didn’t matter at all.

 

The sight of the other man naked wasn’t something Clark was entirely prepared for.

 

Bruce watched him and waited while Clark took it all in.

 

Finally, when Clark was sure his voice wouldn’t betray anything, he spoke. “Do they hurt?”

 

“Some of them, sometimes, on cold mornings.”

 

Clark let his eyes track over the scars. The burn on his arm was the newest one, but not the most imposing. That prize went to one on his thigh, long twisted and white, travelling from near the knee all the way up to his hip. It looked like it should have killed him, or at very least taken his leg. Somehow it had done neither. It made Clark feel guilty for being able to do what they did and not wear a mark at the end of the day.

 

But, despite it, Bruce’s scars couldn’t hide the shape of his body, firm, symmetrical, and undeniably powerful, even when naked.

 

Clark felt his throat constrict as his gaze tracked from broad shoulders, down the firm and surprisingly hairless torso, to his groin. Bruce’s pubic hair was short and stubbly, in the process of growing back from a shave. His balls large and low despite the chill room. His penis long, curved slightly to the left, and circumcised.

 

He studied him openly for a long time, letting the sight of the other man clench tight in his gut, before moving his gaze back to Bruce’s face.

 

Bruce took that as permission to move forward, closing the gap between them. He kissed him and Clark reached out to tentatively lay his hands on Bruce’s bare hips. As he did so Bruce reached up, slowly, giving Clark time to move away, and unfastened Clark’s cape. It dropped to the ground behind him with a heavy thump.

 

That was the moment Clark realised they were going to have sex again.

 

The thought was both exciting and strangely unnerving. He thought of what he knew about Bruce, about how his sexual activity would come in waves. While he worked on a case he didn’t have sex at all but after something was solved...

 

“Bruce?”

 

“Hm?”

 

The man reached out and carefully starting pulling the top half of Clark’s suit up and off. Clark let it happen.

 

“What we’re doing… I don’t want you to do it with anyone else.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Clark shuddered as Bruce tossed aside the S branded shirt and fell to his knees to pull Clark’s pants down. He floated so Bruce could pull them, and his boots, off his feet.

 

“I mean it. I don’t know… I don’t know what we are to each other, and I don’t need to know, but I…”

 

“Clark?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Believe it or not, I don’t actually get along well with many people. It’s no great loss for me to leave them out of my bed.”

 

“But…” he swallowed as Bruce’s hands and eyes slid up his body. “Bruce Wayne has a reputation.” It was more dignified than saying ‘ _I know you have a lot of sex’_ … but only just.

 

Bruce grunted. “You would be surprised how attractive a billion dollar bank account is to some people.”

 

Clark tried to say something else but then Bruce kissed him and the tenderness, the closeness, the quiet newness of being naked with this man took hold. He let his hands explore, felt Bruce do the same, and gave himself over to the mounting arousal low in his gut.

 

By the time Bruce pulled him into the shower they were both getting hard again.

 

This time, they took things slow.

 

Kissing, touching.

 

At one point Bruce asked him if he’d ever done anal before. He had. It was something he and Lois had enjoyed from time to time. He told Bruce that, but the conversation died there. Neither of them seemed willing to stop kissing long enough to seek out a bedroom or a bottle of lube. But that was okay, because they had time. Whatever they weren’t doing now they could do later. They could, if they wanted, do nothing but spend days learning all the different ways to make each other come.

 

The idea was enough to take him the rest of the way to hard.

 

Clark came four more times, and Bruce twice, before they finally collapsed together onto the medical cot, naked and no cleaner despite the shower.

 

Clark wasn’t sure how long they slept but when he woke Bruce was gone. He sat up slowly and saw his suit washed, folded, and resting on the bedside table. It looked brighter than usual which had to be his imagination because he’d cleaned it by scrubbing dirt off with red hot lava and then dipping it in the raging artic seas. How could any washing machine do a better job than that?

 

Or maybe laundry was Alfred’s superpower.

 

When he floated back out into the body of Batman’s base he found Bruce sitting by the computer. There were several things on the screens including footage of Superman carrying a shocked refugee woman away from the Gotham city dockyard. The new caption read: Superman stops illegal immigrants.

 

Clark felt sick.

 

“That’s not right.”

 

Bruce looked up, saw him, and followed his gaze. “You used to work in media. Surely you know how easy it is to get a story wrong.”

 

He thought of Clark Kent’s last, unfinished article. A sordid tell-all that would have revealed Bruce Wayne as Batman and detailed his crimes in explicit detail. If that had been published Bruce would have been arrested, his life destroyed.

 

He sucked unhappily at his teeth as he watched the footage play out.

 

“Will they get deported? The people we saved?”

 

Bruce turned to look at him.

 

“They’re refugees,” Clark answered the question he saw in that look. “It’s kind of my thing. Last survivor of a doomed world and all that.”

 

“They might be,” he finally answered. “I’ll be putting pressure on the police department to offer them temporary residency in exchange for testifying in court and the Wayne Foundation is going to support them as part of our victims of crime program.” He lowered his voice. “But I am not the one that makes the laws, or the ultimate decision.”

 

Clark bowed his head.

 

“Clark.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“If you really want to help them,” Bruce said. “I can imagine no greater ally than Superman.”

 

He huffed out a bitter laugh. “If I start getting political people will start hating me again.”

 

“Is that going to stop you?”

 

Clark took a moment to think about the question. Since returning from the dead he had been experiencing a ‘honeymoon period’ with the media. There seemed to be a bipartisan agreement that Lex Luthor’s obvious criminality and his Christ-like resurrection had made him immune to criticism… at least from all major news outlets.

 

That support had transferred over to the people. The anti-alien protests had shrunk to almost a tenth of their former size and now people could even buy Superman shirts and suits in malls and costume shops. 

 

But, despite that, his life had never been harder. Not only had he been grieving, and without an identity, he’d spent weeks trying to feed the hungry, help the poor, and move those that had been forced to flee their home from one refugee camp to the next… only to have to come back and do it all again when the same people needed rescuing in the same ways. The empty smiles and signatures seemed like a poor trade-off if, instead, he could help some people in a way which might allow them to lead lives which they didn’t have to have constant help just to survive.

 

“No,” Clark said feeling strangely excited about the prospect of putting Superman back into the social political firing rage. “It’s not going to stop me.”

 

“Good,” Bruce turned back to the computer. “And if you fail I can help make identities for the most desperate.”

 

Shocked. “You can make identities?”

 

“Yes. But not as well as Victor.”

 

“As in Cyborg?”

 

“Yes. That boy can hack into any computer not air gapped just by thinking, including almost all government systems. He wouldn’t do it for me, but he may do it for you.”

 

“Why would he do it for me? I barely know the kid.”

 

“Yet he seems to like you.” Bruce turned his chair to face Clark. “He was the one that buried the ‘Superman is Clark Kent’ theory online.”

 

“That was him?”

 

“It certainly wasn’t me. I’m not good enough at hacking to manipulate so many information streams simultaneously… especially when, I suspect, Lex Luthor or some other enemy you don’t yet know about was trying to push the information into public consciousness.”

 

“Oh.” A pause. A long pause. “Do you think he would be willing to make an identity for me?”

 

Something passed behind Bruce’s eyes. “If you ask.”

 

“How do I contact him?”

 

“Get online. He’ll find you.”

 

Clark studied the other man. “Or… could you do it?”

 

“I can.”

 

“Will you?”

 

Bruce shifted. “Victor would do a better job.”

 

“Yeah, well, I think I’ll be calling in another favour of him and don’t want to ask too much.”

 

“What other favour?”

 

“I think I’ll be asking him to come to the next Justice League meeting. If he likes me he’ll be more willing to come if he thinks I am leading instead of you.”

 

Bruce stared at him, silent.

 

“I think Flash will come if I race him,” Clark continued. “He seemed keen on the idea, and Diana can probably be talked around. If the rest of us are all on side that will probably sway Aquaman.”

 

“Why?” Bruce asked. “I thought you weren’t interested in leading the Justice League.”

 

“I’m not. Not on my own, anyway. But, if you trust them, and if this is something you want, then it’s something I think I can do for you. And even if I can’t, we have a better shot of uniting the league if they know it’s both of us together.” He smiled. “What do you say? An identity for a Justice League?”

 

Bruce was speechless. That felt good. It also felt good to know Clark wasn’t just accepting another gift from the man. He was helping Bruce, just as Bruce was helping him. And that was the way it should be.

 

“That’s one hell of a deal, Kent.”

 

“Is that a yes?”

 

“One condition," Bruce said, voice dangerously low. "You fuck me. Now.”

 

Clark laughed. “Done.”


	25. The Beginning

Bruce was moving back into Wayne Manor.

 

It had taken the better part of a year but, at last, the renovations were finished both in the building itself, and in the cave network beneath it. Bruce had his new base, big enough for another ten jets and a house that had already appeared on the covers of every renovation magazine in the country. Despite that, Alfred seemed more enthusiastic than the man himself to move into the Wayne ancestral home and watched with an eagle’s eye as Clark unloaded furniture from the van.

 

“Careful Mister Kent, that piece is from the Victorian era. Very delicate.”

 

“I’ve got it, Alfred. Where do you want it?”

 

“The west wing’s master bedroom’s powder room, between the living room and the ensuite.”

 

It took a while for Clark to decode that sentence. “Okay. Where is that?”

 

Alfred sighed. “It’s the room with the blue wallp—”

 

“Got it.” Clark zipped up, placed the ridiculously embellished love seat in the corner and then flew back down the stairs. On his way down he noticed Bruce, leaning in the foyer’s fire place, face down and body still.

 

“Hey,” he called out.

 

Bruce looked up, eyes bleak.

 

“You okay?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He wasn’t okay. He’d been part of Bruce’s life for months now and, despite what people said, the man wasn’t hard to read if you took the time to try. Bruce also tended to overthink things to the point of obsession and sometimes needed someone to pull him back and remind him of everything else.

 

They also hadn’t had sex in over a week. Bruce, he had observed right from the start, would have sex when he was happy, especially just after a case, but would rarely want to if something was wrong or unresolved.

 

Clark flew to his side. “Do you want to help unload the van? I think it’s the last one.”

 

Bruce didn’t answer.

 

Clark moved in closer to looked at the fireplace, empty and scrubbed clean. “What are you thinking about?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Don’t give me that, Bruce. You’re thinking about something. What is it?”

 

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Clark was starting to think he wouldn’t answer when…

 

“It’s one year since your resurrection.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s one year since your resurrection,” Bruce said again. “Today. Exactly.”

 

Clark stared as his brain quickly did the maths. He hadn’t realised, more focused on preparing and helping Bruce with the move, Superman’s ongoing campaign for refugee rights, and wrangling the Justice League together for a debrief on the latest mission. But Bruce was right. It had been one year.

 

One year since Steppenwolf. One year since the birthing pit.

 

One year since standing in a cornfield with Lois, her eyes wet as she turned away from a kiss.

 

“Jesus.”

 

His world had ended that day in the cornfield. Everything he had hoped for and died for had been ripped away and yet, somehow, in the year that followed he had picked up the pieces and carried on, despite everything inside him that said he couldn’t. Somehow he’d managed to stumble forward in the world, do more good than bad, and even create a new identity for himself, Jordan Elliot, an unassuming dockworker who lived in downtown Gotham with friends who winked at him and covered his shift when he needed to fly away to save someone.

 

But that wasn’t all. He’d turned Superman into a champion for refugees, somehow managed to herd the flock of cats that was the Justice League into a vague semblance of order and, in a strange twist of fate, had fallen into the arms of a man who had tried to kill him. A man he had thought was, if not an enemy, then something close to it.

 

It wasn’t like it had been with Lois. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, his relationship with Bruce was probably the most imperfect thing he had ever done. It was hard, bitter at times, messy… but still good and unshakably strong. A thing he could lean on and rely on no matter what else was happening.

 

Bruce was looking at him now, studying his reaction.

 

“Jesus,” he said again, just to get it out of his system. “I didn’t realise. Should we do something, I mean, with the Justice League. Our one year anniversary should be…” he trailed off. He and Bruce both knew the Justice League wasn’t the concern at this moment.

 

They stood in silence for a while, alone by the refurbished fireplace. Then…

 

“Lois would marry you,” Bruce said. “If you ask.”

 

“No. She wouldn’t.”

 

“If you asked her, she would. You’ve both had time to grieve, time to heal, and time to remember the good. If you asked her now, really asked her, she would say yes.”

 

“Bruce.”

 

The man turned his face away. “You know I’m right, Clark.”

 

He probably was. Bruce usually was about this sort of thing. But that didn’t matter.

 

“She’s happy, Bruce. I’m not going to change that.”

 

“Don’t you want to be happy?”

 

“I am happy.”

 

Bruce turned back to look up at him, his expression reserved.

 

Clark met his gaze and smiled, a small exasperated smile. Without a word he leant forward and pushed a kiss onto Bruce lips. It was brief, merely a brush of lip on lip, but it was enough to felt the electric pulse life pass between them. Beautiful, thrilling, and paradoxically also comforting. Rough lips, scratchy stubble, warm breath. _Bruce_.

 

“Come on,” he said softly in the space between them as their lips parted. “That van won’t unload itself.”

 

“Are you sure?” Bruce whispered back. “I’ve barely lifted a finger and somehow things are _flying_ into the house.”

 

“One more comment like that and you’ll find your furniture _flying_ onto the roof.”

 

“Fine. What is there left to carry in?”

 

“I’ll make sure to find something big and heavy for you.”

 

Clark turned to walk towards the door and hid his grin as – in the reflection on the glass doors – he saw Bruce’s gaze flicker down to rest on Clark’s arse for a long moment before he pushed himself off the fireplace and started following.

 

It was strange to think a year ago he would have missed that.

 

A year ago he had been too consumed by the pain of losing Lois, and losing the life he had known, to see something as simple as Bruce checking him out, or helping him for the sake of helping him, or getting caught in a downward spiral of negative thoughts. But now he did. He knew and could recognise all of those behaviours because he knew Bruce.

 

A year ago that intimacy would have seemed laughable. Now it was as natural as breathing.

 

He would be lying if he said he still didn’t sometime miss the ease and simplicity of his life with Lois. Being Clark Kent and discovering the world as Superman for the first time. That had been his world, Lois had been his whole world. But now he had made a new world – a confusing, complicated, messy world – with Bruce. And, despite everything, it was this world where he wanted to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. I just want to use this space to say a quick thank you to everyone who has read, commented, kudosed or otherwise engaged with this story. It's really lovely to get such a positive response especially on a fic I was a little unsure about. As I am sure you all know by now, the DCEU is not my natural home in the Superbat fandom, however, I have had a really great time diving into it and I really hope I have created something that not only my usual readers have enjoyed, but DCEU exclusive fans as well.
> 
> I am a bit nervous about this ending but I think it's safe to say I am always a wee bit nervous when it comes to my writing, especially first and last chapters. Those are always the hardest.
> 
> I'm not sure what else to say so I will leave it there. Superbat lives.


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